UK's Prince Charles opened a new 4,000-bed temporary hospital in a conference centre in east London on Friday, the first of several being built in Britain to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

The new state-run National Health Service (NHS) Hospital is named after the trailblazing 19th-century nurse Florence Nightingale and has been built in just nine days.

He paid tribute to everyone involved, calling it "quite frankly incredible" to have transformed the giant ExCeL centre into a critical care facility in such a short period of time.

"I was one of the lucky ones to have COVID-19 relatively mildly," he said. "But for some, it will be a much harder journey.

"I am therefore so relieved that everyone can now have the reassurance that they will receive all the necessary technical care they may need, and every chance to return to a normal life."

NHS Nightingale London will initially take 500 people in the coming days, said Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who has also tested positive for COVID-19.

It will take intensive care patients with COVID-19 from other London hospitals, which have seen the most number of cases across Britain.

The new facility is the size of 10 district general hospitals, and has more than 80 wards, each containing 42 beds, and when fully operational will require more than 16,000 staff to run.

Hancock praised the NHS, a taxpayer funded service free at the point of use, which has been struggling in recent years as a result of public spending cuts.

Temporary hospitals are also being built in exhibition centres in the cities of Birmingham and Manchester, with capacity of up to 3,000 beds between them.

A third is under construction in Glasgow and plans are also in place to build two more in Bristol, in western England, and the northern city of Harrogate offering 1,500 beds.

NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said he hoped the extra two sites would not be needed.