“We have to work fast to combat the epidemic,” a worker in his 30s, who refused to give his name, told AFP.

He said he worked nine hours per day, “sometimes less, sometimes more. It depends on what they need”.

The 25,000-square-metre hospital will have between 700 and 1,000 beds to treat patients of a pneumonia-like virus that has killed 81 people — mostly in Wuhan — and infected more than 2,700 across the country.

The second facility will have 1,300 beds.

“We’ve mobilised all the workers left in Wuhan to work in shifts to ensure round-the-clock construction,” Zhang Chongxi, general manager of the road and bridge company of Wuhan Construction, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.