Authorities in China have glorified the rush to build two
infectious disease hospitals in a matter of days at the epicentre of the
coronavirus outbreak that has now claimed at least 490 lives on the mainland,
with live streams showing the construction and the arrival of the first
patients at Huoshenshan field hospital in Wuhan on Tuesday.
The 1,000-bed Huoshenshan, or Fire-God Mountain, hospital and the
1,600-bed Leishenshan, or Thunder God Mountain, hospital - which will start
taking patients on Thursday - have been the main focus of attention for the
country's state-run media, with round-the-clock coverage.
Less known, however, are the other hospitals now under
construction elsewhere in the country to address the shortage of beds and
facilities needed to treat the outbreak.
Al Jazeera has been able to identify several that have broken ground in
the past week as well as many more, from larger 1,000-bed facilities to
smaller, 50-bed rural clinics, that are being planned or are already under
construction.
"I don't think anyone knows the number, it could be [a lot of these]
are either the county level, city level or the district level," Chen Xi,
assistant professor of Public Health at Yale School of Medicine told Al Jazeera
by phone.
The only other hospital to receive sustained attention from
China's official media is a prefabricated isolation facility being built at an emergency hospital in Zhengzhou, the
capital of Henan province, which is just north of the major outbreak area of
Hubei. There, 542 portable cabins were installed to serve as an isolation ward
for coronavirus and will be ready to receive patients by mid-February.
While some have dubbed these other hospitals as local versions of
Xiaotangshan, the Beijing hospital famous for treating patients during the 2003
outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), there appears to be some
wariness about reusing that name to avoid sparking panic.
Glowing like a
football stadium
One construction worker at a 1,000-bed facility being built in the
Gao'ling area near Xi'an in Shaanxi province, told Al Jazeera that government
officials had requested they not use the Xiaotangshan name.
"We can see the new site from our window," a resident near the
Xi'an facility said, also declining to allow his name to be used.
"Last night it was glowing like a football stadium. Even now we can
see the cranes operating, a straight three-kilometre line away from our
place."
A growing fear appears to be local opposition to placing new
infectious disease hospitals near residential areas, with people concerned the
hospitals will become provincial centres for treating cases and end up being
zones for the transmission of the virus.
Such was the case in Nantong, Jiangsu province, where two residents were
arrested for "spreading rumours" about a new facility online. The
local government, however, confirmed that a new hospital to treat coronavirus
patients was under construction.
According to a statement from local police on February 4, a Mr Wang was
arrested for saying the "facility would be used for coronavirus cases from
all around Jiangsu" while a Ms Feng was arrested for collecting images and
messages and circulating them on WeChat, China's main social networking
platform. Each was fined 500 yuan [$71] and jailed for five days.Source
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