Lee added that Beijing had agreed in principle to all of his side’s requests.

While mainland health authorities acknowledged Hong Kong’s efforts to combat the virus over the past two years, they noted that the highly transmissible Omicron variant had outrun the city’s ability to contain infections, he said.

Lee weighed in on the growing debate over whether the government should lock down the city’s 7.8 million residents in order to carry out mass testing in a bid to identify and eliminate hidden transmission chains in the community.

“At the moment, we don’t have such a plan. We believe that the enhanced measures that we have introduced will have an effect,” Lee said, referring to the latest round of social-distancing rules announced this past week.

The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said the delegations had assessed the situation the city was facing and concluded the Omicron-fuelled wave “has not yet peaked”.

“Under these circumstance, there is an increasing need for relevant parties to increase their awareness of the risks, unite societies, deploy various resources and come up with a more determined will, wider consensus and more forceful measures to combat the pandemic,” it said.

The Hong Kong delegation included the ministers for health, security, mainland affairs, transport and housing, while the health, home affairs and food and environmental hygiene departments were also represented.

The mainland side was led by Huang Liuquan, the deputy head of Beijing’s cabinet-level Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, and also included: Sun Yang and Li Dachuan, both deputy directors of the National Health Commission; Yin Zonghua, the deputy director of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong; Zhang Xin, Guangdong province vice-governor; and Ai Xuefeng, deputy mayor of the Shenzhen government.

A mainland government source said Guangdong was coordinating with diagnostic service providers in the province to ramp up testing capacities, with a plan to boost the level from the current 70,000 to 200,000 in two weeks.

The supply of personal protective equipment, masks and other medical goods would arrive in batches as early as next week and authorities were expected to decide in the coming week or two the size and location of a makeshift hospital the mainland was helping the city set up, the insider said.

The meeting came as Hong Kong confirmed a record 1,514 confirmed cases. The figure capped what has been the city’s worst week for infections since the pandemic began: a total of 6,567 cases have been reported since last Sunday, up sharply from the 1,042 recorded in the week before.

Along with another three coronavirus-related deaths, authorities reported more than 1,500 suspected cases, prompting a warning from Dr Edwin Tsui, controller of the Centre for Health Protection, for residents to brace for large numbers of infections in the days ahead.

“I hope Hongkongers will be mentally prepared,” he said. “We are now in the toughest battle with this virus in two years, and we believe infection numbers will remain high.”

Of the latest fatalities, a four-year-old boy died after he vomited and passed out at his home in Yuen Long soon after 3am on Friday. He was admitted to Pok Oi Hospital, where he was later certified dead. The hospital said he tested preliminary-positive for Covid-19 and the case would be passed to the Coroner’s Court.

Hong Kong ban on cross-household gatherings sparks confusion, anxiety

The two other deaths involved an unvaccinated 98-year-old man with underlying illnesses and a vaccinated 75-year-old man, taking the total to 221.

Three patients remained in critical condition, including two men, aged 84 and 97, while 16 were listed in serious condition.

All but five of Saturday’s cases were locally transmitted, while 17 involved the potentially more lethal Delta variant and the rest were Omicron. About 50 public hospital staff were also among the latest cases, with another 20 being listed close contacts, Hospital Authority said.

Edmund Wong Chun-shek became the first Legislative Council member to test positive for the coronavirus, after taking a rapid test at home. All 18 other legislators from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong would take rapid tests in the next three days and try to stay home when possible, according to party chairwoman Starry Lee Wai-king.

The city’s tally of confirmed Covid-19 cases stands at 21,633.

When asked whether a coronavirus infection that did not include any symptoms could be considered a non-threatening diagnosis such as the common flu, Tsui warned the public against making such a comparison.

“We should not underestimate where the virus trend is going. The coronavirus has many mutations and it could evolve to target particular people or age groups,” he said, adding the World Health Organization had advised against equating the coronavirus with the flu as the former was still new.

Tsui also revealed that 1,500 units in phase 1 and 2 of the Penny’s Bay quarantine camp were already accommodating patients with mild symptoms, and authorities planned to finish preparing 2,000 other rooms for additional infected residents.

But in another sign of how cases are quickly overwhelming facilities, Tsui said authorities had issued 1,091 more home isolation orders for close contacts of patients in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 3,478, which involved 1,415 flats.

The Hong Kong team visiting Shenzhen included ministers for health, security, mainland affairs, transport and housing. The health, home affairs and food and environmental hygiene departments were also represented. They were scheduled to meet officials and experts from the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, the National Health Commission and other relevant authorities.

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen told a radio programme on Saturday that local authorities would ask the central government to provide manpower, supplies, as well as construction advice for quarantine and treatment facilities.

“Although the capacity of the current quarantine and treatment facilities have already been increased, we will find ways to build more of them as soon as possible due to the large scale of the latest outbreak,” he said.

Nip also said that three pop-up vaccination centres would be set up in Fanling, Tuen Mun and Sha Tin next week, in addition to the city’s 15 existing sites, to help boost the inoculation rate of residents.

Each of the new centres would be able to provide more than 1,000 doses of the BioNTech vaccine per day, he said.

Chinese Covid-19 test kits ‘able to screen 51 million people daily’

But vaccination rates among the elderly remained low, with figures from a week ago reporting that only 22 per cent of those aged 80 or above living at elderly homes had been vaccinated, according to Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong on Saturday.

But the central government was not waiting for the talks to start bolstering Hong Kong’s anti-pandemic efforts, with hundreds of Cantonese-speaking laboratory staff from across the border already dispatched to boost the city’s testing capacity, insiders added.

To free up treatment facilities, the Hospital Authority relaxed requirements for discharging patients. They need only show two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests 24 hours apart with a CT value above 30, or a positive antibody test result plus one PCR test with a CT value above 30.

The lower the CT value, the higher the viral level and more infectious the person could be. Previously, coronavirus patients were released from hospital if their three test samples had a CT value of 33 or above, which may take between five and seven days.

Additional reporting by Victor Ting, Denise Tsang, Leung Pak-hei and Tony Cheung