Near Madrid airport, an army of cranes works round the clock to build a new pandemic hospital which is expected to open in November, reports AFP.
But a second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak is already under way in Spain, straining the capital’s public health care system.
Around 400 builders have been working round the clock since July to build the 45,000-square-metre (484,000-square-foot) Isabel Zendal hospital, which will be able to care for over 1,000 patients during a health emergency.
Concrete mixers churn at full speed at the vast building site as welders set off sparks from the pillars which will form the backbone of building.
“Two months ago there was nothing here,” said Alejo Mirando, the director general of health infrastructure in hardest-hit Madrid region.
The regional government of Madrid is spending over 50 million euros ($60 million) to build the hospital, which will have bay windows which will allow doctors to monitor patients without becoming contaminated
and large halls without individual rooms.
The architecture was designed to “avoid transmission” of viruses and it was inspired by the design of a temporary field hospital set up at Madrid’s sprawling Ifema exhibition centre between March and May, said Mirando.
The opening of the new hospital however will come too late to deal with a surge in infections in the Madrid region, which Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called “worrying”.
