China promises to raise new hospital in Wuhan in less than 10 days

The government of China has started building a new hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak of the new coronavirus mutation (2019-nCoV), with a capacity to serve 1,000 patients. State media say the hospital will be ready to open on February 3, 10 days from now.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, at least 45 backhoe machines arrived in Wuhan during the night of Thursday 23. Aerial image of the agency STR showed them all in the work of preparing the ground this Friday, 24.

The hospital complex will be built using prefabricated buildings, to speed up and cheapen the project, as the Chinese government did during the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. In that case, the nearby Xiaotangshan hospital from Beijing, was lifted in just seven days.

The purpose of the construction is to "respond to the insufficiency of existing medical resources," Wuhan officials said on Friday, 24. Overburdened, at least eight city hospitals are said to have publicly asked for donations of hospital materials and equipment, such as masks.

A nurse at the Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan posted a video on social media exposing poor conditions at the facility, with patients killed in the corridors. The Red Cross did not comment on the video.