Stand-alone hospital wards and drive-through testing centres could be built within 72-hours to help Australia deal with any rise in coronavirus cases.

The pop-up hospitals and clinics, designed by the University of Sydney, could be rapidly produced from recyclable materials and “have already been used to respond to crisis situations across the globe”.

Architecture professor Robert Barnstone, who created the blueprints, specialises in disaster and emergency response.

“As the number of coronavirus cases increase, Australia is facing a serious shortage of hospital beds and will need to look at solutions like the field hospitals in New York and elsewhere,” he said in a statement on Monday.

“We have designed a way for governments to quickly create more space using locally available, mass-produced and easily assembled materials.”

Not-for-profit company, P&G Paper Tubes, says its factory has the capacity to build one hospital room per minute from recycled materials and deliver anywhere in the country.

Company director Douglas Abdiel said the company could supply new hospital wards or drive-through testing clinics in just 72 hours “to reduce the risk to all other patients in our health systems”.