A shipping container COVID hospital for S.Korea
A hospital... made out of shipping containers.
This is South Korea's solution to a shortage of hospital beds as it grapples with its third coronavirus wave. Reuters watched as authorities scrambled to assemble it on Thursday.
This is the first time container beds have been installed in the capital Seoul. The daily reported cases in the country hit 682 on Thursday.
Park Yoo-mi is the quarantine officer for Seoul's metropolitan government.
"An additional 48 hospital beds in shipping containers will be installed. Container hospital beds at Seoul Medical Center will be operated according to the demand for sickbeds. We will continue to manage infection through installing barriers near the containers, separating routes, and consulting infection control experts to ensure safe treatment."
Health authorities also plan to step up testing by launching temporary sites at some 150 locations across the greater Seoul area.
Park added that the city has dispatched 50 epidemiological investigators to 25 districts to help track down potential patients.
New cases have been persistently around 600 per day over the past week, driven by smaller, harder-to-trace clusters around the densely populated capital.
