Wuhan coronavirus: Desperate China to construct dedicated hospital within 6 days in outbreak-ravaged megacity
A Chinese city plagued by a new life-threatening virus is making a desperate effort to stop the outbreak of its infection by building a dedicated hospital in the next six days.
According to Chinese media, the government of Wuhan -- a major city by the Yangtze River where the virus is believed to have originated -- has ordered a state-run construction firm to build the emergency facility in the Caidian District. The construction will be modeled after a six-acre temporary treatment center that was built in Beijing to tackle SARS in 2003. The facility was completed within seven days and had a capacity of 1,000 beds.
The news was first disclosed by Jiemian, a Chinese media outlet affiliated to the official Shanghai United Media Group. According to the report, the China Construction Third Engineering Bureau has undertaken the urgent task, and their employees are expected to finish the hospital's design by tomorrow.
While the article noted the facility would comprise one-to-two-story prefab houses, more details are yet to be released. The number of fever patients has surged considerably, per Wuhan health officials, who said hospitals were facing a shortage of beds and seeing queues growing longer every day.
This comes after a renowned virologist warned that the new coronavirus had the potential of an outbreak at least 10 times worse than the SARS epidemic of 2003, which claimed 775 lives. Dr. Guan Yi is the director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong.
Yi, who helped tackle the SARS outbreak in 2003, confessed to Chinese media that the situation in Wuhan was already "uncontrollable." Furthermore, he claimed Chinese health authorities had already missed the "golden period" to control the spread of the virus. "I have experienced so much and never felt scared. Most [viruses] are controllable, but this time I am scared," Dr. Guan told various news outlets.
According to him, the worst is yet to come.