Virus patients in Spain get five-star hotel quarantine

By Ihesiulo Grace

4 April 2020

Foreign

An ambulance driver wearing a white protective gown enters a Barcelona hotel and announces the arrival of three new “customers” — a trio of coronavirus patients discharged from hospital into luxury quarantine.

“Good morning! How are you? My name is Enrique Aranda and I am probably the first non health care worker you see in several days,” says the director of the five-star Melia Sarria hotel, peering into the ambulance.

It took just three days to convert the hotel, which features contemporary decor and bathrooms with marble finishing, into a clinic.

“Some patients arrive thinking that they were taken out of hospital to be left to die, many people are frightened. I try to make them forget all that,” said Aranda, wearing mask and gloves.

“I don’t let them out of the ambulance until I get a smile out of them. I want them to enter in another way, that they see that they aren’t in a hospital anymore, it is a hotel.”

Instead of arriving with a suitcase, the hotel’s new clients carry bags containing just a few personal belongings and their medical report.

They are not welcomed by bellhops, but by a team of nurses wearing green or blue gowns, gloves and face masks.

As soon as patients enter, the nurses take their temperature, revise their medical reports and ask if they need to contact any family member while hotel employees assign them to a room.