The government of the Wuhan City in China started with the building processes for a 1000-bed hospital as a response to the coronavirus outbreak. The hospital will be finished in 6 days.
This decision comes after the city’s current hospitals are overwhelmed and some of them have even started turning away patients.
This rapid and ambitious construction aims to increase the number of available beds for the patients that are diagnosed with the virus.
New Hospital Is Currently under Construction
The work on the new hospital started on Thursday night and it will be a 270,000-square-foot facility that will open up by February.
This is a response to the insufficiency of medical resources, explain the city officials.
Even though the plans for the hospital are still in the final phase, they’re expected to be sent to the construction company this week.
A video circling the internet is showing a fleet of bulldozers working hastily on the construction of the new hospital.
The Coronavirus Is Taking Lives & Is Further Spreading
Cases of the virus have been reported in the US, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau.
In the city of Wuhan, China, the outbreak has taken the lives of 26 people and 830 are infected with it.
With the Chinese New Year underway, hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel throughout the country to visit their relatives.
Authorities have slowed down the tourist travels and closed down a lot of tourist attractions to prevent the virus from spreading further.
In the US, a second case of the virus was confirmed in Chicago on Friday. The patient is a woman in her 60s who’s not in serious condition who had recently came in from Wuhan.
Most of the death cases concerning the virus happened among elderly men with previous health issues; however, there’s been a young man reported to have died from the coronavirus in Wuhan.
How Is China Capable of Building a Hospital in less than a Week?
According to senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, Yanzhong Huang, China holds the record of finishing things fast, even for monumental projects like a hospital.
He notes that the hospital in Beijing in 2003 was constructed in 7 days.
The hospital was built to accommodate patients showing symptoms of Sars. Allegedly, it broke the global record for the fastest hospital construction.
The Wuhan hospital, same as the one in Beijing, will be constructed from prefabricated buildings.
The engineering team is brought in from different parts of the country. Even though it’s a hard thing for westerners to understand, it’s doable, claims Huang.
Sources:
