Hikkaduwa Beach Resort to operate as intermediary care centre for COVID patients

Hikkaduwa Beach Resort Plc has announced that it entered into an agreement with Ruhunu Hospitals Ltd., on 13 May to operate an intermediary care centre at the company’s resort at Hikkdaduwa for six months to provide accommodation and medical care for asymptomatic and mild symptomatic COVID-19 patients in line with the provisional approval granted by the Director General of Health Services, according to Ministry of Health’s admission protocols.

The intermediary care centre will be operated as a joint collaboration between the Company and Ruhunu Hospital. In view of new arrangement, the company has temporarily discontinued its normal operations with effect from 13 May, Hikkaduwa Beach Resort said in a disclosure to the Colombo Stock Exchange.  The Agreement was entered into pursuant to Ruhunu Hospital expressing its interest to run an intermediary care centre at the company’s resort at Hikkaduwa providing its expertise and resources in the field of medical and health care to operate the proposed intermediary care centre at the resort and after the board having evaluated the said proposal vis-a-vis the prevalent conditions. The disclosure said in arriving at its decision to collaborate with Ruhunu Hospital to operate an intermediary care centre, the board considered all attendant circumstances such as restrictions in revenue generation in travel and tourism industries resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic world over, the need to maintain and up-keep the company’s resort at Hikkaduwa which involves heavy expenditure, the financial evaluation of maintaining an intermediary care centre, and also the company’s duty as a responsible corporate citizen to provide its fullest cooperation to facilitate the exigencies that have arisen due to the pandemic situation in the country whilst making every endeavour to facilitate at least a modest revenue generation in the interests of all stakeholders during this difficult period of time.