Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam on Tuesday slammed health experts critical of the massive COVID-19 testing program due to begin on September 1, describing their statements as "politically motivated."

Some medical experts are attempting to smear the central government by publicly saying they don't support the testing scheme, Lam said at a press conference, alleging their comments were politically motivated. "I can't think of any other reason," she added.

The HKSAR on Tuesday reported 19 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, of which 16 were local transmissions. The Asian financial hub saw the third wave of the outbreak following the recurrence of local infections on July 5. 

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"The goal of universal community tests is to allow members of the public who want to take the test to be tested. We are not going to compel anyone to take the test," Lam said. 

"For the current social distancing measures, they are the most stringent since the epidemic emergence, exactly because we still have cases of unknown sources of infections and clusters. That shows there are still silent transmissions in the community," she explained. 

The HKSAR government said earlier that the large-scale testing that may cover millions of people in Hong Kong will be conducted for free and on a voluntary basis. All asymptomatic Hong Kong residents aged above six can participate in the testing. 

Personal information of the participants will be well protected and will not be transferred out of Hong Kong, according to Secretary for the Civil Service of the HKSAR government Patrick Nip.