China has pledged to build a new 1,000-bed hospital within six days in Wuhan, the epicentre of a deadly virus that is sweeping across the country and through Asia.

The facility, built specifically to contain and treat the virus, will be a prefabricated structure on a 25,000- square-metre (270,000-square-foot) lot, slated for completion Feb 3.

Building machinery, including 35 diggers and 10 bulldozers, arrived on site on Thursday.

Authorities said the facility would be based on the Xiaotangshan hospital site near Beijing, which began as a 1,000-bed field hospital during the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003 which killed some 800 people.