Fangcang Hospital

Fangcang Hospital (Chinese: 方舱医院; pinyin: fāngcāng yīyuàn; lit.: 'square-cabin hospital')[1] refers to a kind of makeshift/mobile field hospitals notably used during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Such hospitals were intended for large-scale medical isolation and instituted either by establishing rapidly constructed modular/portable buildings, or through the acquisition of indoor space within existing venues and even temporarily renovated gyms and dorms in colleges and universities with enclosed cubicles to assist social distancing.

In Wuhan, since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019, the general medical institutions and the newly-expanded pneumonia specialist hospital became overcrowded due to the sudden surge in hospital bed demands, and high-level care must to be prioritized to severely ill patients. Meanwhile, the large number of low-severity cases — almost all are individuals with suspected or mild symptoms — still needed at least a fortnight of isolation (due to the incubation period of SARS-CoV-2), but voluntary home isolation could risk infecting family members and neighbors, and in-hospital isolation will hold up medical resources and increase the risk of nosocomial exposure. Under such circumstances, the principle of centralised low-level treatment of non-critical patients was adopted. The Government of the People's Republic of China established 16 square-cabin hospitals in Wuhan, providing a total of more than 20,000 beds.[2][3][4] As of March 10, 2020, all patients admitted to the square cabin hospital of Wuhan Wushan Hongshan Stadium were discharged. Thus, all 16 square cabin hospitals in Wuhan completed their missions and their cabins were shut down.[5]