Twenty staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 at Chennai’s star hotel, the Leela Palace, health authorities said on Monday.
This is the second luxury Chennai hotel after the ITC Grand Chola to have emerged as a COVID-19 cluster.
At least 85 ITC hotel employees, family members, and neighbors were declared positive for the latest coronavirus infection on Saturday. Although the hotel officials said they were following all state-directed standard operating procedures (SOPs), the Tamil Nadu health authorities ordered a saturation test, in addition to their own hygiene protocol, covering all members of the establishment and throughout the city’s hotels.
A senior health official said that 232 workers were tested at Leela Palace and findings of approximately 10 percent showed they had coronavirus disease.
A total of 6,416 people are working directly on hotels in Chennai, according to officials. Of the total, approximately 68% were tested for coronavirus or 4,392 staff members.
The Senior Official said that overall 125, nearly 3%, the hotel workers have tested positive, and reports of another 491 are awaited. He also monitored closely all executive meetings, activities in city hotels.
“Hotels in Chennai are being periodically screened and sensitized. The Chennai Corporation was asked to conduct a saturation test for all the residents of the hotel,” said Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan earlier.
This is the third instance of a high-profile outbreak of the COVID-19 cluster in Chennai in recent months.
The first was detected at IIT-Madras in mid-December of last year. Over 100 students got COVID-19 within a week and the campus had to be temporarily locked down.
