Bhubaneswar: At a time there has been a spurt in COVID-19 cases in Bhubaneswar especially in slum areas, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) today issued new guidelines for private hospitals and nursing homes in Odisha Capital asking them to provide accommodation to their health workers and staffs.

The BMC further said in the recent past several healthcare workers/staffs in private hospitals/nursing homes have been detected positive who usually reside in slum area. “Frequent movement of hospital staffs to slum areas therefore poses risk of spread of the virus quickly,” the guidelines said.

All the private hospitals/nursing homes in Bhubaneswar have been directed to maintain an exclusive database of employees who are residing in slum areas of BMC.

“The employees residing in the slum areas need to be kept in shift for 14 days and the hospital authorities will make accommodation arrangement of those slum dweller employees within the hospital premises,” the guidelines added.

After the 14 days shift, the set of employees will be relieved of the duties after their COVID testing and negative report. The next set of employees will then be given duties and the same procedure will be adopted if the next set of employees also belongs to slum areas.

The accommodation of the employees may be done by observing all sorts of formalities applicable for hospitals/nursing homes (in the light of COVID-19).

All the private hospitals/nursing homes were asked to nominate a responsible officer of their organization as nodal officer. Also, the BMC asked the private hospitals and nursing homes to share the name, designation and contact number along with the preliminary shift arrangement made by them with the ADUPHO-UH(Mob: 9937549932) or in the mail ID: [email protected].