Jan 29 (DailyMail) – China’s first coronavirus hospital has opened today in a city near Wuhan after workers and volunteers spent just two days converting an empty building to a 1,000-bed emergency facility.
The first batch of coronavirus patients were transferred to the Dabie Mountain Regional Medical Centre at around 10:30pm local time today, reported local media.
The project was completed within 48 hours thanks to the joint effort of staff from construction firms, utility companies, and paramilitary police officers, the city’s authority said.
![The Wuhan authorities have instructed four construction companies to toil through the Chinese New Year holiday in order to complete the urgent task. This photo shows excavators and trucks on the construction site of a new hospital on January 27](https://newsin.asia/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Hosp-300x200.jpg)
The hospital building in the city’s Huangzhou District was originally built as a new branch of Huanggang Central Hospital and expected to open in May.
On Friday, the local authority ordered the building, which was completed but empty, to be used for treating coronavirus patients only.
Revamping works started from Saturday.
By Monday, all of the beds had been set up by volunteers, and water, electricity and internet had also been installed, according to the government of Huanggang.
Footage released by China’s Cover News shows medical workers familiarising themselves with the facility today before the patients started to arrive.
More than 500 workers and a dozen heavy vehicles worked two days and nights in order to complete the task on time.
![All of the coronavirus hospitals are modelled on a temporary medical centre, which was built in Beijing in seven days to tackle SARS in 2003 and treated one-seventh of the country's SARS patient in the space of two months. In the picture above, dozens of diggers work to build the six-acre coronavirus hospital in the Caidian District in the western suburb of Wuhan, China](https://newsin.asia/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Tractor-300x200.jpg)
Situated 75 kilometres (46.6 miles) south-west of Wuhan, Huanggang has a population of around 7.5 million and is one of the cities that have been hit by the coronavirus the hardest.
It went into lockdown last Thursday, the same day as Wuhan.