Incredible time-lapse footage shows Chinese workers toiling day and night to build a massive quarantine camp with over 4,000 isolation suites to fight coronavirus

• Chinese workers have assembled hundreds of units in a huge quarantine centre in Hebei within 138 hours 
• Local officials said 606 furnished suites would be ready today and another 1,173 would be finished tomorrow  
• The makeshift camp covers 108 acres and is designed to have 4,156 individual apartments when it’s complete
• It’s expected to hold thousands of people who have come into direct or indirect contact with COVID patients

Mailonline By EMILIA JIANG FOR MAILONLINE PUBLISHED: 12:35 GMT, 19 January 2021 

China is rushing to build a massive quarantine centre in its new COVID-19 ground zero as an incredible time-lapse video shows construction crews working around the clock to erect the emergency facility to curb a surge of coronavirus infections. In this photo taken on January 16, cranes and construction crews work at the quarantine site in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province.

The isolation camp covers 108 acres and is expected to have enough rooms to hold more than 4,000 suspected coronavirus carriers once it’s finished, authorities said. Workers are seen at the construction site of a quarantine centre in Shijiazhuang.

With hundreds of workers and machines toiling day and night for the past five days, thousands of prefabricated quarantine units filled a vast field in northern Hebei Province, which has become the focus point of the country’s latest virus outbreak.

The construction began on January 13 in the county of Zhengding on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang city as northern Chinese cities placed millions under lockdown after reporting a fresh wave of infections in recent weeks.

Over 20,000 local villagers have been sent into quarantine in centralised facilities since clusters of cases started to emerge in Shijiazhuang’s Gaocheng District in the beginning of January.

Following an urgent government order, more than 600 workers and 100 construction machines have been sent to the site, working 24 hours non-stop in sub-zero temperatures to complete the 108-acre development.

In a time-lapse video released by state broadcaster CCTV, the construction team is seen working from dusk till dawn for the past five days, laying platforms on the brown field and assembling the cabin-like structures at an impressive speed.

After nearly six days of relentless building, 1,195 of the makeshift units have been built and ready to be furnished, according to a post by China Construction Second Engineering Bureau, part of the team responsible for the project.

By the end of Tuesday, a total of 606 quarantine suites is expected to be ready for use and another 1,173 of them are set to be completed tomorrow, reported state media Xinhua News Agency.

In a separate clip aired by CCTV today, a reporter is seen touring one of the isolation rooms equipped with air-conditioning, a boiler and an en suite bathroom.

It remains unclear exactly how many people will end up being confined in the Zhengding camp, but workers are expected to build 4,156 suites using prefabricated materials to house suspected coronavirus patients.