(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) –A new 1,000-bed coronavirus hospital has opened in a city close to Wuhan where the outbreak of the disease began.
The Dabie Mountain Regional Medical Centre started receiving patients at 10.30pm last night after workers spent just 48 hours converting an empty building. More than 500 construction workers, electricians and police worked around the clock to open the hospital in the Huangzhou District. It was originally intended to be a hospital that would open in May, but faced with the growing threat of the spread of coronavirus they managed to complete the task much sooner. Local authorities announced on Friday that the building would be converted and work started on Saturday.
Yesterday, it had water, electricity and internet, ready for patients. An even more ambitious building project is underway in Wuhan itself where authorities have given a deadline of Monday for another large hospital in the city.
Four hospitals are being built in super-quick time, using pre-fabricated buildings and modelled on a medical centre built in Beijing in 2003 in seven days to tackle SARS. The death toll in mainland China following the outbreak of coronavirus has risen to 132 while nearly 6,000 people are infected, authorities have said. There were 26 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours, with all but one recorded in Hubei province.
