Greek military hurried to build a mobile tent hospital in Thessaloniki as the nation’s health system reaches a breaking point with hospitals almost at 90 per cent capacity.

The temporary mobile hospital will include facilities for an additional 50 Coronavirus patients.

Greece’s Deputy Defense Minister Alkiviadis Stefanis visited the hospital, which is located in the parking lot of the northern city’s main military hospital, said the field hospital would be ready by the end of the week.

In the evening news report on Greek national broadcaster ERT, hospital administrators in the city’s main public hospitals– including private hospitals that were appropriated by the government to handle the influx of Covid-19 patients– described just how tense the situation is in Thessaloniki.

Northern Greece has been at the epicenter of a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases, with volunteer medical teams being flown in from other regions of Greece to help doctors and nurses who are working 17-20 hour shifts.

“We are at war,” Greece’s government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Monday.

Thessaloniki’s intensive care units are operating at a 96 per cent capacity.