Timelapse video: Watch heavy machinery build a coronavirus hospital in days

The construction sites of the two hospitals with around-the-clock livestreaming, broadcast by China Media Group’s social media video platform Yangshipin, have received over 50 million hits from Chinese netizens, calling themselves “volunteer supervisors.”

As tens of millions of Chinese residents are currently stuck at home to avoid infections and to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) epidemic, many of them turned to follow the real-time construction progress of two field hospitals built for treating the viral pneumonia patients, with workers, trucks and excavators racing against the clock to make the deadline.

In the live streaming video, the audience can have a bird’s-eye view of the construction site from two different perspectives for each hospitals since it started on Monday evening.

Without any video narrator, advertisement or any shot changes, both of the relatively dry minute-by-minute livestreams have attracted up to over 50 million hits as to 13:47 Thursday.

Located in Caidian District and Jiangxia District in suburban areas of Wuhan, the Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospitals will play a crucial role in the battle against novel coronavirus, attracting worldwide attention.

The construction of the Huoshenshan Hospital started on Jan 24. The hospital will cover an area of 33,900 square meters and contain different departments including patient wards, consulting rooms and sterilizing rooms. It will be put into operation on Feb 3.

With its construction started on Saturday, or the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Day, the Leishenshan Hospital is scheduled to be completed by Feb 5.

By 18:23 Wednesday, the Leishenshan hospital was connected to power supply.

Both of the two hospitals are constructed following the building model of the Xiaotangshan Hospital in Beijing.

At the height of the SARS outbreak in 2003, the Xiaotangshan Hospital was built in seven days and admitted one-seventh of the SARS patients in the country within two months, creating a miracle in the history of medicine.