Just 2 months ago, the city of Wuhan, China announced the construction of Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital, adding 1,000 beds, 30 ICUs, and new isolation wards to the city's medical arsenal to combat the Coronavirus epidemic. The building was completed in under 10 days by a team of 7,000 construction workers, a far cry from the reality many countries are facing as they scramble to quell the outbreak and wrestle with the shortcomings of their own healthcare systems. With over 14,000 dead and more than 300,000 infected worldwide, not to mention a shortage of medical supplies and facilities, health systems across the globe are feeling the strain of preparing for a crisis.
The outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that began in Wuhan in December 2019 was declared a worldwide emergency by the World Health Organization just three months later in March 2020, when the virus had taken hold in 173 countries. With a high communicability rate, and a lack of adequate prevention or containment, the virus can infect multitudes of people simultaneously; overwhelming health resources in the most hard hit areas. In countries where the virus initially emerged, buildings have undergone rapid construction and renovation in order to accommodate the growing number of patients infected by the disease. On the other hand, in countries where the virus emerged later, like in the majority of Latin America, governments across the continent have taken preemptive measures to contain the spread of the virus so as not to overwhelm their already resource-strapped health systems.
