China’s race to build temporary hospitals- Video

China’s race to build temporary hospitals to fight coronavirus ‘too little too late’

South China Morning Post
Linda Lew
10:32pm, 31 Jan, 2020

Follow the link to see a video of the construction
https://youtu.be/UoErujrHgAI

**Three makeshift facilities are under construction in Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak

**But academic says they may be substandard, and specialist treatment centres should already be in place

... Hundreds of workers were mobilised last week to build the facilities, which are modelled on the Xiaotangshan hospital built in Beijing in 2003 to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) patients.

The temporary hospitals – two in the outbreak epicentre of Wuhan and one in Ezhou, both of which are in Hubei province – are part of efforts to contain the pneumonia-like illness and will provide much-needed hospital beds, where patients can be treated in isolation.

They were expected to be completed in a week to 10 days and live streams from the construction sites in Wuhan have drawn millions of viewers. Other measures include imposing a lockdown on more than a dozen Hubei cities, including Wuhan.

Chan Wai-keung, a lecturer in social sciences at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the makeshift facilities in Hubei were not enough.

“Building the Xiaotangshan hospitals now is too little too late,” Chan said. “But it is better than none.”

He said hospitals specialising in infectious diseases should be built in various locations around China so that they are in place before outbreaks happen and can be put into use immediately to treat patients and contain the spread of a virus.

Chan said there were also concerns that the fit-out and equipment at the temporary hospitals could be substandard given the speed at which they were being built.

The two new facilities in Wuhan will provide another 2,300 beds and are expected to be ready next week. They have been given names derived from feng shui that aim to show a determination to fight the outbreak – Huoshenshan, meaning “Mountain of the God of Fire”, and Leishenshan, meaning “Mountain of the God of Thunder”, according to state-run Global Times.

In Ezhou, the temporary hospital is expected to be completed in 10 days and will add 600 beds, according to the Hubei government.

The health commission on Thursday said around 11,000 hospital beds had been made available for patients in isolation around the province and more would be added as needed.

As with the Xiaotangshan hospital in Beijing during Sars, the two facilities in Wuhan will be managed by the military.
Despite the scepticism over the rapidly built hospitals, a source familiar with the People’s Liberation Army medical team deployment said they would be run to a high standard. (We shall see)

...Similar facilities are also under construction in Heilongjiang and Henan provinces.
Guangdong was preparing to potentially build temporary hospitals in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and other cities, the province’s health commission said on Friday.

Full Article Available:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048490/chinas-race-build-temporary-hospitals-fight-coronavirus-too