Rent for emergency field hospital to cost CK 26 million

by   CIJ Linguistics
2020-10-23   08:47
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The Czech government is set to pay CZK 26 million to rent a field hospital that's now being built in the Letnany fairgrounds to help deal with an expected lack of beds for Covid-19 patients. This led opposition politicians to ask why the government hadn't accepted an offer from the PPF financial group to use the O2 arena in Prague 9 for free. Prime Minister Andrej Babis rejected the criticism, saying that the O2 arena wasn't suitable for the construction of a field hospital and that if the pandemic situation worsened suddenly, there would be no feasible way to expand the facility. By contrast, the field hospital in Letnany can be expanded as needed. He said that the state was paying CZK 26 per square meter for the space, which was a far cheaper rate than the commercial price for renting space at the fairgrounds which is generally, CZK 3,000 per square meter. He said that another field hospital could be built as necessary in the Brno Fairgrounds complex (BVV).