Amid severe lockdown, Shanghai opens up massive 50,000-bed makeshift hospital

The sprawling Chinese city of Shanghai is set to open a massive 50,000-bed makeshift hospital in order to house coronavirus patients as the country battles what appears to be a major spike in COVID cases.

Workers were busy this week putting the finishing touches on the ad-hoc hospital at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai. The city already has multiple makeshift hospitals for housing tens of thousands of patients. 

China at the beginning of last month began posting sharply escalating COVID numbers, with the country seeing its first reported outbreaks of the virus since April of 2020. 

The country in the spring of 2020 initiated a severe lockdown of large parts of the Hubei province, including Hubei's capital city of Wuhan, in an effort to control the spread of the virus.

The disease appeared to have emerged from Wuhan itself. The lockdowns there in early 2020 played a major role in the shutdowns that subsequently spread across the rest of the world, with national leaders across the planet eventually ordering lockdowns of their own in the belief that China had successfully controlled the virus via stay-at-home orders. 

Shanghai was placed on severe lockdown at the beginning of April as COVID cases rose there. It has not yet been lifted.