COVID-19 cases hit another daily record of 4,285 in Hong Kong on Wednesday. During the surging fifth wave of infections, businesses and government organizations on the Chinese mainland have been helping the city to fight the outbreak. Many of them are from Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province, next to Hong Kong.
The Guangzhou municipal government held a press conference on Wednesday, with the participation of businesses assisting Hong Kong by sending in food and medical equipment, including one of the city's most urgent needs – testing supplies.
"To support Hong Kong, we first increased production capacity of test kits. We also provided fast COVID-19 antigen detection kits. They are easy to use and provide results in about 15 to 20 minutes, so they are useful in special circumstances," said Kang Keren, the senior vice president of Wondfo, one of the biggest producers of COVID-19 antigen detection kits on the Chinese mainland.
On top of delivering testing kits, a company in Guangzhou has also been constructing new testing facilities in Hong Kong, and allocating more testing professionals to the city.
"After the new surge, we dispatched another 40 people to Hong Kong to double our capacity. We've started to use our second lab and might soon send an additional temporary air-inflated mobile lab," said Wang Linglai, senior vice president of KingMed Diagnostics, a company that has diagnostics labs throughout China.
Hong Kong is also facing food shortages because many of the truck drivers who deliver food to the city have tested positive for COVID-19, so some businesses at the conference have also sped up production to cover the shortage, including companies such as Guangzhou Kuangfeng Industrial Co. Ltd. and Guangzhou Ge Yun Food Co. Ltd.
The Guangdong provincial government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government have also been working to facilitate operations for businesses, such as faster customs processing for food going into Hong Kong, and special permits for constructing new test labs in the city.