On Monday, China’s authorities plan to open a 25,000-square-foot prefabricated hospital in the city of Wuhan to treat Coronavirus patients, just 10 days after starting construction.
Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital is being built on the west side of the Hubai province capital, the center of a coronavirus outbreak that’s killed at least 200 and infected at least 9,600 people in China, according to Dezeen.
State outlet CGTN has been streaming video of around-the-clock construction since work started on the 700-to-1,000-bed facility. Around 4,000 workers and 100 heavy machines are working on the project, according to the outlet.
The facility is built with prefabricated units roughly 100 square feet in size and is based on a Beijing hospital built in a week in 2003 in response to the SARS outbreak at the time.
The Chinese military will staff the facility and the central government has called in 6,000 medical workers and medics to the city of 11 million to combat the outbreak.
The Hubai government is building a separate 1,600-bed hospital nearby and plans to open it Wednesday. Local doctors have said they’ve had difficulties handling the growing number of cases. The central government locked down travel to and from the city earlier this month.
Under 100 cases have turned up in neighboring countries and a half dozen cases have been confirmed in the United States, according to the New York Times.
The first domestic person-to-person transmission was reported in Chicago on Thursday. The U.S. State Department has issued a travel advisory warning against travel to China. [Dezeen] — Dennis Lynch