Facing ICU crunch, Europe rushes to build field hospitals

Rome

Facing intense surges in the need for hospital ICU beds, European nations are on a building and hiring spree, throwing together makeshift hospitals and shipping coronavirus patients out of overwhelmed cities via high-speed trains and military jets.

The key question is whether they will be able to find enough healthy medical staff to make it all work, reported the Associated Press (AP).

Even as the virus has slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals in Spain and France are reaching their breaking points, and the U.S. and Britain are bracing for incoming waves of desperately ill people.

“It feels like we are in a third world country. We don’t have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too,” said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.