Canteens, training centres turn into COVID care centres

Corporates repurpose unused office space into temporary quarantine facilities

A dire need for hospital beds is seeing organisations repurpose their ‘unused’ office space into COVID care centres, offered not only to employees. Tech Mahindra’s cafeteria at its Noida campus is now a 40-bed COVID facility. In Bengaluru, Bosch Limited has converted its Sport Complex on its Adugodi campus into a 70-bed COVID Care Centre and handed it over to the local-body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. HDFC Bank has converted three of its training centres at Bhubaneswar, Pune and Gurugram into isolation facilities. (Last year, following an MoU with the Government of Maharashatra, Wipro repurposed one of its information technology campuses in Hinjewadi, Pune into a 450-bed intermediary care COVID-19 hospital for treating moderate cases.)