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Coronavirus: Chinese hospitals in chaos as lockdown spreads to affect 20m people
Public transport suspended in at least 10 cities as death toll rises and heath care centres struggle to cope with influx of patients
Hospitals in the Chinese city of Wuhan have been thrown into chaos and the movement of around 20 million people has been restricted by an unprecedented and indefinite lockdown imposed to halt the spread of the deadly new coronavirus.At least ten cities in central Hubei province have been shut down in an effort to stop the virus, which by Friday had killed 26 people across China and affected more than 800.
The World Health Organisation described the outbreak as an emergency for China, but stopped short of declaring it to be a public health emergency of international concern.
In the city of Wuhan, where most cases have occurred, the race to build a new 1,000-bed hospital in just six days began on Thursday night. Diggers and bulldozers beginning work on the site of a holiday complex once intended for local workers, according to Chinese media.
The hospital, which is due to open next week, is similar to those established in Beijing in 2003, when the city faced a Sars outbreak that killed almost 800 people and reached nearly 30 countries.
During that crisis, 7,000 workers in Beijing built the Xiaotangshan hospital in its northern suburbs in just a week. Within two months, it treated one-seventh of all the country's Sars patients, the Changjiang Daily said.
"It created a miracle in the history of medical science," the paper added. It said the new Wuhan hospital "is to solve the shortage of existing medical resources".
People who sought treatment in Wuhan this week told the Guardian they had been turned away from hospitals
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