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Agence France-Presse

Surrounded by police roadblocks, the vacant lot on the outskirts of Moscow is guarded like a military site.
Moscow city authorities are rushing here to construct a medical facility for coronavirus patients styled after a hospital built in record time after China’s outbreak.
The building site, where ground broke just last week, is frantic, with a non-stop parade of Kamaz trucks and concrete mixers.
Located in Golokhvastovo, a village about 70km (40 miles) southwest of Moscow, the facility was inspired by the “experience of Chinese partners”, city officials said last week.


In February, China built a prefabricated hospital with 1,000 beds over 10 days in Wuhan, the epicentre of its coronavirus epidemic.
Labourers from across Russia and Central Asia – already accustomed to working on giant public projects in Moscow – are surrounded by diggers, huge mounds of earth and sand, and ditches dug between bouts of freezing rain.
“We don’t have a precise timetable, but we hope to finish within a month. Maybe sooner,” said Pavel, a 28-year-old worker from Russia’s Chuvash Republic, 600km (370 miles) from Moscow.
Wuhan to close makeshift hospitals for Covid-19 patients
Many of the 3,200 builders, who are working day and night, live on the site in prefabricated buildings and a purpose-built tent village.
“The first patients with coronavirus should arrive here in April,” said Arthur, 31, a foreman in charge of environmental protection at the site.
The 500-bed facility, extending over 43 hectares (106 acres), will be a “medical centre among the most modern”, deputy Moscow mayor Andrei Bochkarev said in a statement last week announcing the facility.

It will include “operating theatres, resuscitation and diagnostic services”, and facilities for children, he said.
Authorities have not disclosed the cost of the project, but Russian news website Znak, citing city hall documents, said it would cost 8.5 billion roubles (US$107 million).
Why Putin is in no mood to call oil war truce with Saudi Arabia
President Vladimir Putin has said the coronavirus situation is “under control” in Russia, although the number of official cases is increasing rapidly, with 253 recorded as of Friday.
But many Russians are sceptical of these figures and worried about a major potential outbreak.
Anticipating concerns from residents living near the new facility, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the hospital would be built 250 metres (820 feet) from several old wooden houses, the nearest homes in the village.

But resident Anatoly Bulychev is unimpressed.
“They are building a giant infection. It will not bring anything good,” the 79-year-old says, sitting on a bench as trucks parade past.
“Let Sobyanin build this hospital near his country house. It’s not like we are running out of space in Russia.”

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Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus: Russian workers race to finish ‘Chinese-inspired’ hospital

An aerial view of the construction site for the new hospital outside Moscow, on Thursday. Photo: Sputnik via Xinhua

epa08306700 Workers carry a cable for a temporarily infection hospital for patients with coronavirus disease Covid-19, which urgently built outside Moscow, Russia, 19 March 2020. The hospital capacity will be 500 patients and it is planned to finish construction within a month since the beginning. Russian officials report about 199 infected by virus SARS-CoV-2. One elderly woman with diagnose Covid-19 died, but from another problem. EPA-EFE/SERGEI CHIRIKOV

A view shows the construction site of a new hospital being built to treat patients infected with the COVID-19 novel coronavirus in the village of Golokhvastovo, some 50 kms outside Moscow, on March 17, 2020. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)

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People walk inside the Yaba Mainland hospital compound where Covid-19 patients are being treated in Lagos, Nigeria, in February. Photo: AP

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Medical staff undergo a pre-screening procedure at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases building at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore. The city state’s first two deaths were recorded at the centre on Saturday. Photo: AFP

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News

World

Russia & Central Asia


More than 3,200 builders working day and night to complete 500-bed facility on outskirts of Moscow
Putin says situation ‘under control’, as Russia’s number of official cases increases rapidly, with 253 recorded



More than 3,200 builders working day and night to complete 500-bed facility on outskirts of Moscow.
