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The Saskatchewan hotel industry is getting ready to offer up rooms in the event that COVID-19 overwhelms the number of beds available in the province’s hospitals.

The Saskatchewan Hotel and Hospitality Association (SHHA) has created an emergency preparedness plan and shared it with the Ministry of Health and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA). Jim Bence, president of the SHHA, has already had calls with the health ministry and the SHA to discuss how hotels can be utilized if they need to be transformed into field hospitals.

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“What we thought was that as healthcare systems reached capacity, there’s a window of opportunity for us in Saskatchewan to make plans and at least have something in place that would allow the healthcare system to use other supports,” Bence said during a phone interview from Saskatoon on Tuesday.

Bence said the SHHA reached out to its members to ask who would be willing to lend assistance, and heard back from 70 hotels in the province. Bence said it would be up to the health authority to determine which hotels would be most appropriate to use.