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Carnival Corporation has announced that it has offered some of its cruise ships from its cruise line brands to be used as temporary hospitals to help the hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Carnival stated that some cruise ships from Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises and P&O Cruises Australia will be available.

With the increasing number of Covid-19 cases, there is external pressure on the healthcare facilities that are falling short of resources such as hospital beds.

To aid the facilities on land, Carnival Corporation has offered the cruise ships to governments and health authorities to use the cruise ships to temporarily treat patients who are not infected with COVID-19.

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This is expected to make room and increase the capacity of land-based healthcare centres to treat Covid-19 patients.

Carnival added that the interested parties will only have to bear the essential costs of the operations of the ship.

In a statement, Carnival said: “These temporary cruise ship hospital rooms can be quickly converted to install and connect remote patient monitoring devices over the ship’s high-speed network – providing cardiac, respiratory, oxygen saturation and video monitoring capabilities.

“The rooms also have bathroom facilities, private balconies with access to sun and fresh air, as well as isolation capabilities, as needed.

“Additionally, cruise ships being used as temporary hospital facilities to treat non-Covid-19 patients would have the ability to provide up to seven intensive care units (ICUs) in the ship’s medical center equipped with central cardiac monitoring, ventilators and other key medical devices and capabilities.”

The cruise ship would be docked near the pier where there is a need. The ship would be operated by the ship’s crew and would also carry out the operations on the ship.

UK-based cruise ship brand Saga also offered two ships to the government to be used as a ‘floating hotel’.