The state government has offered several of its facilities in Calcutta to big private hospitals to set up Covid treatment centres but so far there has been only one taker.

The lone private player that has shown interest till Sunday evening is Medica Superspecialty Hospital, which is keen on setting up a temporary 200-bed Covid treatment facility at Kishore Bharati Stadium in Santoshpur.

Medica received the state health department’s nod on Sunday to set up the facility. “The 200-bed facility will start running in seven days,” said an official at Medica.

Kishore Bharati Stadium housed a quarantine centre for contacts of Covid patients who did not have spare rooms at home to stay quarantined. Health department officials said they had started releasing people who are testing negative for Covid from the quarantine centre.

“We have received the state health department’s nod to set up a temporary Covid treatment facility at Kishore Bharati. We will set up 200 beds. Half of them will have oxygen supply. We will complete the conversion in a week’s time,” said Alok Roy, the chairman of Medica Superspecialty Hospital.

The hospital had proposed to the health department that Kishore Bharati Stadium be converted into a Covid treatment centre.

“Patients will contact us for admission. It is like an extension of our hospital. The treatment will be offered at West Bengal Health Scheme rates for patients getting admitted to the Kishore Bharati facility,” Roy said.

The state government and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) have opened a 200-bed safe home – for Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms who do not have space at home to isolate – near Science City.

They are now working on opening another 200-bed safe home at Gitanjali Stadium in Kasba, next to Acropolis Mall.

The CMC and the health department have also decided to increase the number of beds at the safe home at Uttirna in Alipore from 100 to 500.

“Any individual who wants to get admitted in a safe home has to contact the state health department or the CMC or the South 24-Parganas district administration. The government will send an ambulance to bring the person to the safe home. The contact numbers are available on the health department’s website,” said an official.

An official of the CMC said the safe home at the auditorium was being managed by SSKM Hospital. Patients whose condition is worsening are being shifted to SSKM and patients recovering at SSKM are being sent to Uttirna a day or two before discharge.

“This is being done to free beds at SSKM,” said the official.

Officials of several private hospitals told Metro that their human resources and infrastructure were stretched to the limit and they were not in a position to run a centre outside their premises.

An official at Peerless Hospital said treating a patient outside the hospital was impossible for them. “We are concentrating on increasing the number of Covid beds at our hospital. We think we cannot provide treatment to a patient outside our campus comparable to what we offer at our hospital,” the official said.

Ruby General Hospital, too, does not want to set up any treatment facility or satellite unit outside the hospital. “We have 110 beds now. We will increase it to 130 very soon. But we do not want to treat Covid patients outside the hospital,” said an official.

An official at AMRI Hospitals, too, expressed inability to run treatment centres at a stadium or an auditorium. The group has opened satellite units.