PHOTO: REUTERS
Working on a war-footing, authorities mobilised men and machinery to ready the hospital within 10 days.
Deputy Director-General Information Department at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lijian Zhao took to Twitter on Tuesday and shared a video showing labourers working at “Chinese speed” to complete Huoshenshan hospital.
Chinese speed. Infrastructure maniac. #Wuhan's 1000-bed #Coronavirus hospital, Huoshenshan hospital, will be completed in 9 days. It will be handed over after one day of medical equipment installation. pic.twitter.com/Ag7bWEIJIh
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) January 28, 2020
"We are racing against time. The 1st building of #Wuhan's #Coronavirus hospital, Huoshenshan hospital, was completed in 16 hours. China Construction which built the hospital is the same company which built the Multan-Sukkor Motorway and the Centaurus. Let’s pray for Wuhan & China!," said Zhao earlier.
We are racing against time. The 1st building of #Wuhan's #Coronavirus hospital, Huoshenshan hospital, was completed in 16 hours. China Construction which built the hospital is the same company which built the Multan-Sukkor Motorway and the Centaurus. Let’s pray for Wuhan & China! pic.twitter.com/ENgZPO2RS1
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) January 27, 2020
The virus has killed more than 100 people in China on Tuesday as the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared it an emergency but stopped short of declaring the epidemic of international concern.
Most of the cases are in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated late last year.
The new hospital is being built around a holiday complex originally intended for local workers, set in gardens by a lake on the outskirts of the city, the official Changjiang Daily reported. Prefabricated buildings, which will have 1,000 beds, will be put up, it said.
Building machinery, including 35 diggers and 10 bulldozers, arrived at the site last week.
“The construction of this project is to solve the shortage of existing medical resources,” the report said. “Because it will be prefabricated buildings, it will not only be built fast but it also won’t cost much.”
China records first virus death in Beijing as toll passes 100
China State Construction Engineering, one of the companies building the hospital, said it was “doing all it can and would overcome difficulties” to play its part, adding it now had more than 100 workers on the site.
Images on state television and social media showed a flurry of activity at the muddy building site with dozens of diggers painted in multiple colours hard at work preparing the ground, as a stream of trucks ferried in materials and equipment.
The hospital aims to copy the experience of Beijing in 2003 when the city battled Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). As many as 774 people died globally in the SARS epidemic, which reached nearly 30 countries.
At the time, Beijing built the Xiaotangshan hospital in its northern suburbs in just a week. Within two months, it treated one-seventh of all the country’s SARS patients, the Changjiang Daily said.
With additional input from Reuters.
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