Pre-fab buildings being used with 35 diggers on site

The city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in China has begun building a hospital it intends to complete in just six days.

A total of 35 diggers and 10 bulldozers arrived last Thursday night to begin work on the hospital, with video on Chinese state television the following day showing enabling works already well underway. Work is scheduled to finish in the next couple of days.

Pre-fabricated buildings will be used to assemble the facility being built on a 25,000sq m lakeside site in Wuhan which was originally earmarked for a holiday resort for local workers. 

During the sars virus outbreak in 2003, which infected 8,000 people and killed around 800, over 7,000 workers built a temporary hospital in Beijing consisting of pre-fabricated isolation units in just a week.

The rapid mobilisation of China’s construction capabilities follows the recent outbreak of the virus, which has no cure and, by this morning, had killed 80 people and infected close to 3,000.

All public transport in Wuhan and nine other cities has been shut down by Chinese authorities, sealing in an estimated 30 million people.