GEORGE TOWN: Hoteliers have refuted concerns that some hotels with centralised air conditioning systems are not suitable as quarantine centres as the air in the rooms can be contaminated with the Covid-19 virus.
Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) chief executive officer Yap Lip Seng told theSun that the air conditioning uses a centralised chilling system.
“The air in the room is circulated within the confines of a centralised chiller system,” he said.
Yap was commenting on a report in the Borneo Post, which quoted an engineer as saying that the problem with centralised air conditioning was that some of the air from a room or corridor could be sucked into the conduit and recirculated to all the rooms after passing through the cooling tubes.
“The virus (Covid-19) from infected persons could be sucked in and circulated, thus infecting the whole building or hotel. This is why cruise ships have such high infection rates,” the engineer was quoted as saying.
The engineer urged the government to consider all angles seriously before allowing hotels to become quarantine centres.
Yap said 49 hotels throughout the country have been selected as quarantine centres, adding to the several student hostels at public institutions of higher learning and rest houses.
The quarantine centres would act as referral points for Malaysians returning from overseas as of last week, as well as for those classified as Patients Under Investigation (PUI).
Yap said the hotels were offered to the Health Ministry temporarily as the majority of them had stopped operating since the the movement control order (MCO) came into force.
The Health Ministry took over the hotels under the powers conferred in Section 2 of the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988.
“This decision was made after discussions were held with the Tourism, Culture and Arts Ministry and the Health Ministry. We at MAH just sourced out the hotels whose owners were willing participants.”
According to Health Ministry data, there are over 8,500 PUI who had close contact with infected persons or those who may be asymptomatic.
Yap said the selected hotels will only impose minimum charges for the authorities to transform the rooms into quarantine areas. Some of the terms and conditions imposed by MAH are that security and health personnel be supplied by the government, health authorities oversee the entire sanitation process and hotel staff wear protective outfits.
