Washington (CNN) The US military said it is working to convert buildings into hospitals and could potentially provide 10,000 hospital beds in New York, as the coronavirus pandemic escalates.

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the head of the US Army Corps of Engineers, said Friday that retrofitting hotels or dormitories into temporary hospitals to alleviate the burden on civilian hospitals caused by the virus would hopefully take three or four weeks.

"We would like to think we can do this in three or four weeks and try to go as fast as we can," Semonite told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday.

He said the Army Corps of Engineers had developed a standard design and contract in order to help facilitate the process.

"This is an unbelievably complicated problem and there is no way we're going to be able to do this with a complicated option -- we need something super simple," he said, adding that they were aiming to turn empty hotels, college dormitories and other buildings into hospitals capable of providing intensive care adding that the state would be responsible for identifying the buildings and staffing them.

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