China is once again throwing hospitals instantly to deal with its latest wave of COVID-19 patients.
A 1,500-room hospital to treat people with coronavirus was completed on Saturday after just five days of construction. The hospital is one of six, with a total of 6,500 rooms being built in Nangong, south of Beijing, in Hebei Province, The Associated Press reported. Another 3,000-room hospital is under construction in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province.
After largely containing the virus that appeared in the central city of Wuhan in December 2019, China sees a new wave of infections that seems to be getting worse. A total of 645 people are currently being treated in Nangong, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Virus clusters have also been found in Beijing and other provinces.
The speed with which the new hospitals are being built is an echo of the six-day effort that built several hospitals in Wuhan in January and February.
The government said the latest cases were spreading unusually fast and blamed the latest increase on infected people or goods from abroad. “It’s harder to handle,” a government statement said, according to The Independent. “Community transmission has already happened when the epidemic is found, so it is difficult to prevent.”
Also on Saturday, the Beijing government said travelers arriving in the Chinese capital from abroad would be forced to spend an additional week of “medical monitoring” after a 14-day quarantine, but gave no details.
Nationwide, the Health Commission reported 130 new confirmed cases within 24 hours by midnight on Friday. It was said that 90 of them were in Hebei.