Coronavirus: London's ExCel centre will soon be a hospital

The centre is over 80,000 square feet in size

The ExCel Centre in London will soon be turned into a temporary hospital which will be used to treat coronavirus patients.

The new medical facility will be called the Nightingale Hospital and it'll be able to hold up to 4000 patients.

The British Army will be helping to transform the event space, which is 87,000 square metres in size, alongside experts from the NHS.

Parts of the new hospital are expected to be open as early as next week.

About 500 beds will be made available initially and ventilators and oxygen will also be provided for patients.

Read more: Coronavirus: What is being done to tackle the virus?

The Javits centre in New York has also been turned into a temporary hospital

A team of planners from the military visited the centre over the weekend to see how they could make use of the space.

Conservative MP Ben Wallace, who oversees the activities of the British Army, told the BBC the military was also looking out for other possible locations to treat patients who can't be kept in normal NHS facilities.

Lots of other countries have taken similar steps to help deal with the number of coronavirus patients.

Some people are currently being treated in the IFEMA exhibition centre in Madrid in Spain, and a hospital in the French city of Mulhouse is using its car park as a field hospital.

The Javits convention centre in New York has also been turned into a makeshift hospital and it'll house patients who don't currently have coronavirus.