Amidst growing fear and paranoia about the coronavirus, more than 10,000 cases have already been confirmed within China.
According to Quartz, the Chinese authorities have taken major steps to ensure the outbreak can be controlled within their boundaries.
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
Drone footage of the construction site show a ballet of bulldozers digging the foundation. More trucks then can be seen hauling in steel and other material to complete the construction work in record time.
With an equally ambitious timeline, Leishenshan Hospital is expected to be operational by Wednesday, February 5. It will have a capacity of at least 1300 beds.
Scott Rawlings, who leads similar construction work in Hong Kong and China, clarified though that what the Chinese are building is not exactly a hospital but a kind of trauma center.
I would hesitate to refer to the hospital being erected today in Wuhan as a permanent hospital, and it is certainly not a full-service facility. When we are designing the latter, we consider the building’s use and adaptability for 75 years into the future. China does not have that luxury in designing its new hospital in Wuhan.
With no time for consultations for a custom design, Wuhan officials are using blueprints from the Xiaotangshan Hospital, a 1,000-bed facility, that was built in Beijing in a week during the SARS epidemic in 2003.
