KASARAGOD: The Kerala government has announced a 540-bed hospital in Kasaragod on Tuesday. The hospital will come up in three months, said collector D Sajith Babu.
In a Facebook post, the collector said the hospital is a gift to the district from chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and revenue minister E Chandrasekharan. Officials said the Tata Group would be funding the project as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility. The building will be prefabricated construction and will be ready in two to three months, he said.
Initially, it will be used as a COVID Care Centre, with 540 isolation beds and 450-bed quarantine facility.
The hospital will come up on 15 acres of government land at Thekkil village in Chemnad panchayat, he said. The work will start on Wednesday, he said. The collector said the land was on a slope and would require some levelling and sought the help of civil contractors in the area.
"We have many contractors in the area and your earth movers are lying idle now. You should help the district administration in levelling the land. We can start the work tomorrow itself," Sajith Babu said in the Facebook post on Tuesday. He said the government's executive engineer would get in touch with the contractors.
The announcement comes at a time when Karnataka blocked patients from Kasaragod from accessing hospitals in Mangaluru over fears of COVID. Ten lives were lost in the past 14 days of lockdown.