It took a 7,000-member crew working around the clock and 10 days for Chinese authorities to construct a 1,000-bed specialised hospital to handle the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan. The Huoshenshan Hospital, which opened its doors on Monday, was built at the epicentre of the virus outbreak in central China's Hubei Province and seeks to alleviate the collapse suffered by other hospitals in the area. Another 2,300-bed makeshift structure, Leishenshan Hospital, will be opened on Wednesday adjacent to it.
The Huoshenshan Hospital was built by a 7,000-member crew of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and other specialists, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Photos in state media showed workers in winter clothing, safety helmets and the surgical-style masks worn by millions of Chinese in an attempt to avoid contracting the virus.
About half of the two-storey, 60,000-square-metre (600,000-square-foot) building is isolation wards, according to the government newspaper Yangtze Daily. It has 30 intensive care units. The building has specialised ventilation systems and double-sided cabinets that connect patient rooms to hallways and allow hospital staff to deliver supplies without entering the rooms. Doctors can talk with outside experts over a video system that links them to Beijing's PLA General Hospital, according to the Yangtze Daily.
It will specifically handle patients infected with the novel coronavirus, and will be overseen by 1,400 medical staff from the Chinese armed forces, some with experience fighting infectious diseases such as SARS, reports Efe news.
The hospital received a donation of "medical robots" from a Chinese company for use in delivering medicines and carrying test samples, according to the Shanghai newspaper The Paper.
The construction process has been live streamed by Chinese state media, providing an aerial view of how China is taking steps to fight the outbreak of coronavirus.
The construction process for the two massive hospitals began on January 23, with an aim to finish it in 10 days. The blueprint of the two hospitals is based on one of the existing hospitals in Beijing that China built in 2003 to fight the SARS outbreak. The Wuhan treatment centres mark the second time Chinese leaders have responded to a new disease by building specialised hospitals almost overnight. As severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, spread in 2003, a facility in Beijing for patients with that viral disease was constructed in a week.
In other cities, the government has designated hospitals to handle cases of the new virus. In Beijing, the Xiaotangshan Hospital built in 2003 for SARS is being renovated by construction workers. The government has yet to say whether it might be used for patients with the new disease.
The death toll in China's coronavirus epidemic soared to 361, with 57 deaths on Sunday alone, while the number of confirmed cases climbed to 17,205, Chinese health officials announced on Monday.
The first batch of patients arrived at the Huoshenshan Hospital at 10 am on Monday, according to state media. The reports gave no details of the patients' identities or conditions.
The novel coronavirus was first detected in China's Wuhan in late December and has since spread to more than 20 countries. A top Chinese official said that about five million residents of Wuhan have travelled out of the virus-hit city before it was locked down on January 23. China's National Health Commission in its daily report on Monday said that 2,829 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide on February 2, taking the total number of those infected to 17,205.
(With inputs from Agencies)
