Considerations for the Use of Hotels during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Interim technical working document, version 5 (2 April 2020)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented saturation and collapse of health services around the world, requiring the implementation of strategies, not always well organized, to meet the needs resulting from a progressive increase in the demand for medical care. The health service response starts in the community, with public education, public health and prevention measures through primary care, and coordination and linkage with hospitals. Expanding response capacity involves strengthening primary care and providing sufficient resources at the hospital level through measures to repurpose beds, reassign health workers, early discharge of patients, among other measures. To the extent that these health services network capacities need to be strengthened or have been overwhelmed, it is necessary to consider other strategies at the community level. One of these strategies could be fitting out hotels to be extensions of health facilities.