1月下旬，当我们大多数人还在努力拼写冠状病毒，更不用说想象它会到达英国时，你可能会读到一个让你下巴掉下来的标题。

“China building hospital in six days for coronavirus patients,” it said, accompanied by a picture showing 35 diggers on a vast, empty site.

The hangar-like buildings erected in Wuhan could care for 1,000 highly infectious patients suffering from this strange new disease. To all but a few specialists, the speed seemed extraordinary, the kind of thing that can only happen in China.

然而，仅仅两个月后，随着疫情开始在世界各地肆虐，英国就疯狂地开始建设类似的设施，以应对令人恐惧的患者潮。

The main difference was that the UK’s surge hospitals were created in existing buildings repurposed at breakneck speed.

The construction teams told Building Design of the exhilaration of working against the clock and without the usual protocols that can drag out a hospital project to many years not days.

“Everyone just rolled up their sleeves and started on it,” recalled James Hepburn, an engineer and principal at BDP who worked onthe first NHS Nightingale at London’s ExCeL.

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