Worker Who Built Wuhan Field Hospital: We Are Isolated, Treated ‘Like Prisoners’

Workers go about their duties at a section of the Leishenshan Hospital, the newly-built makeshift hospital for novel coronavirus patients, in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on Feb. 18, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images

All around the world, essential service workers are being recognized as heroes for helping to keep economies going amid the pandemic, but not so in China.

Leishenshan, a 1,600-bed emergency field hospital in Wuhan, China’s outbreak ground zero, was built in a record time of fewer than two weeks, thanks to tens of thousands of construction workers who risked their lives toiling on it day and night.