The city of Murmansk in Russia’s Arctic has opened a new coronavirus field hospital two weeks after breaking ground on construction.
Nowhere in the country has a hospital been erected as quickly, regional authorities say.
The 10,000-square-meter hospital in Murmashi, about 15 kilometers south of Murmansk, has 700 beds for coronavirus patients. It consists of nine blocks with various specializations. There are both “clean” and “dirty” zones, and 100 of the beds are reserved for patients needing intensive care, regional authorities said.
The hospital was officially opened on June 6 in a ceremony led by Murmansk Governor Andrei Chibis and deputy emergency situations minister Andrei Gurovich.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry and Health Ministry built the facility. Experiences from the project can now be applied to other places in the country, Gurovich said.
The number of coronavirus cases in the Murmansk region has stabilized in recent weeks, with less than 50 new daily cases now registered in the region’s official Covid-19 statistics.
A total of 3,576 individuals have contracted the virus in the region, 2,288 of whom are employees at Novatek’s Belokamenka natural gas yard outside Murmansk.
Following a major outbreak at Belokamenka, the Murmansk region was for weeks among the Russian regions with the highest numbers of new Covid-19 cases.