Isolation center under construction in Hebei after COVID-19 outbreak

Construction workers on Wednesday started building a centralized medical observation center in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province, where clustered COVID-19 cases occurred.

Ma Shaohai, a project manager with China Railway 14th Bureau Group Co. Ltd., said after receiving the order for the construction project at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, the company mobilized more than 100 people. They were aided by dozens of types of machinery to carry out the work.

The isolation center will likely cover 33 hectares of area near a village in Zhengding County, Shijiazhuang.

Three integrated housing producers in Tangshan City, Hebei, have been entrusted to produce 3,000 makeshift wards for the center. Each ward has a space of 18 square meters.

By the end of Tuesday, there were 395 locally transmitted confirmed cases and two imported ones in Hebei hospitals. A total of 215 locally transmitted asymptomatic cases and five imported asymptomatic cases are under medical observation.

The cities of Shijiazhuang and Xingtai, where most of the cases were reported in the province, have launched the second round of citywide nucleic acid tests.