Major hotels will be turned into quarantine zones and even hospital wards in an emergency plan that is also mobilising industry to fill looming shortages for medical equipment to fight the coronavirus.

Hotels are demanding they be treated as essential services when governments order community shutdowns within days, arguing they can make rooms available for healthcare or self-isolation. The head of Australia's largest private health insurer also predicts private hospitals will be required to treat COVID-19 patients amid concerns intensive care units and other health services will be overwhelmed.

Hotels could be used as quarantine zones for people who cannot self-isolate at home.

With experts warning hospitals will be overloaded within weeks, the Morrison government is working with manufacturers to make thousands more ventilators, masks, sanitisers and other essential products. Australian Hotels Association chief executive Steve Ferguson said a number of hotels and motels had advised the NSW and Victorian governments they were prepared to help with individual self-isolation.

Mr Ferguson said the industry needed to be added to the essential services list for many accommodation venues to continue to trade and was working with governments for that to happen.