According to China’s state media, work started January 23, and the last brick was laid Sunday morning. The Huoshenshan Hospital was built specifically to handle patients infected with the novel coronavirus that has sickened thousands of people and left more than 360 dead, reports Business Insider.
It is on the outskirts of Wuhan, a city with 11 million residents, where the outbreak is believed to have originated. The hospital has an area of 25,000 square meters (269,098 square feet) and has 1,000 beds, with 1,400 military medics of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army expected to staff the hospital.
Construction crews are also working on a second treatment center in Wuhan that will have 1,500 beds. This hospital is due to open this week. Nearly 50 million people are barred from leaving Wuhan and surrounding cities reports the Associated Press.
This is not the first time that Chinese leaders have responded in such a way to a medical crisis. In 2003, as the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS was spreading, a specialized hospital for SARS patients was erected in Beijing in only one week.
NBC News is reporting that China Central Television on Monday quoted project manager Fang Xiang, whose team worked on the hospital, as saying that a project of this scale usually takes at least two years, and this project was more like “mission impossible.”
“It takes at least a month to construct a temporary building, not to mention a new hospital for infectious diseases,” he said, according to CCTV.
The first patients arrived at the hospital Monday morning. Waiting for them were 1,400 doctors, nurses, and other personnel sent by the ruling party’s military branch, the People’s Liberation Army. They will staff the Wuhan hospital, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xinhua News also praised the construction workers and suppliers who labored so hard in so short a time. “Today’s Chinese people are more deeply aware: where I stand is my China,” the newspaper said. “When this national sense of ownership is awakened, our mentality in the face of disasters becomes more mature.”
