Chinese nucleic acid testing agencies can process 51.65 million samples daily, the State Council's joint COVID-19 prevention and control mechanism team said in a statement on Sunday.

The country now has 13,100 qualified nucleic acid testing institutions with nearly 150,000 technicians working in the field, the team said in a statement. In general, test results can come out within six hours, and health departments have kept working on faster testing strategies.

Mass nucleic acid testing has been an effective tool to spot COVID-19 infections in China, and a stronger testing capacity will raise people's confidence to contain the epidemic, the statement said.

China's nucleic acid testing agencies are working to their maximum capacity to cope with the latest outbreak in the country's financial hub of Shanghai. The city has conducted several rounds of mass testing since early April, it said.

(With input from Xinhua)