Since January 2020, many cases of coronavirus disease 2019 have been confirmed in China. Local officials had reported 47,647 new cases of COVID-19 as of 24:00 on 21/2/2020, of which 10,892 were severe cases (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, 2020). The mortality rate of critically ill patients reached over 50% (World Health Organization, 2020a). To improve the treatment capacity for critically ill patients and reduce mortality, one site at our hospital was opened to admit patients with COVID-19. The original intensive care unit at this site only had 20 beds. However, due to the fact that critically ill patients far outnumbered existing beds, and the fact that the use of the 10,000-level laminar flow system in the existing ICU was not conducive to protecting medical staff, decision was made to convert two general wards into two temporary ICUs, adding 72 beds for the critical ill. To date, the two temporary ICUs run well. The experience of assembling ICUs is described as follows.