The new garage ward at Reykjavik's National University Hospital has space for six patients, and has been fitted out with hospital beds and privacy screens, Iceland's public broadcaster RUV reports . It's hoped the move will ease the situation within the main emergency department, where dozens of patients have been forced to wait in the corridors due to lack of capacity.

"You might think this is some kind of joke, but it's about as far from a joke as it could be," Hilmar Kjartansson, the hospital's chief of emergency medicine tells the site. "We are just trying to adapt to a ridiculous situation." He says that while housing patients in a garage is not acceptable, neither is keeping them in the corridors.