China will have built hospitals and isolation wards with a capacity of 9,500 rooms, distributed between Nangong and Shijiazhuang cities in Hebei Province by the end of the coming week, to treat or observe COVID-19 patients and COVID contacts, reports Xinhua.
China is constructing a 3,000-room hospital in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province; the prefecture of Shijiazhuang has 11 million people. Aerial photographs, presented by Xinhua, show a forest of cranes building cluster after cluster of modular units for a centralized medical observation center in Shijiazhuang, with drainage pipes, building frames, doors, electric heaters being mass installed. Each room has an area of 18 square meters.
At the same time, On Jan. 16 China finished building 1,500 rooms for “centralized medical observation” of close and secondary contacts of confirmed COVID casts in Nangong, also in Hebei province, one of six locations in the city where “makeshift facilities” with a combined total capacity of 6,500 rooms are being built, reports Xinhua (see Jan. 17 Briefing). A second location of 1,500 has been completed, but is not yet furnished or ready to accept residents.
Qu Peicheng, a manager of the Nangong project said some 300 workers in two shifts have worked day and night on the project. “We often can’t feel our hands as we keep working in temperatures as low as −16°Celsius”, said a worker in Nangong. He continued, “We hope to do our part so that our folks can resume a normal life.” The media, such as the New York Post, call these “instant hospitals.”
