Wuhan to build second hospital for those infected in 15 days

BEIJING • China's Wuhan city will build a second dedicated hospital to treat patients affected by the novel coronavirus, the state-run People's Daily reported, a day after announcing the first one.

Construction of the hospital, designed to have 1,300 beds, is scheduled to be completed in half a month.

Construction has started on the first dedicated hospital and is due to be finished by Feb 3, the People's Daily said on Saturday.

The first 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 on Friday. 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 on Thursday night.

"The construction of this project is to solve the shortage of existing medical resources," the Changjiang Daily report said. "Because it will be prefabricated buildings, it will not only be built fast but it also won't cost much."

China State Construction Engineering, one of the companies building the hospital, said on Friday that 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 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.

Wuhan authorities aim to follow the example of Beijing in 2003, when the city battled severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars). At the time, Beijing built the Xiaotangshan hospital in its northern suburbs in just a week.

REUTERS