Coronavirus: first batch of supplies from mainland China arrives in Hong Kong as top Beijing official calls for efforts to be sped up
- Guangdong provincial government ordered to send first batch of mobile nucleic acid testing vehicles and epidemiologists to Hong Kong on Thursday
- Meanwhile, city confirms 6,116 new infections and more than 6,300 suspected infections
The first batch of mainland Chinese supplies to support Hong Kong’s fight against a surge in coronavirus cases arrived in the city on Thursday, a day after a top Beijing official ordered authorities there to speed up their efforts.
The meeting on Wednesday, led by Xia Baolong, director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, was aimed at implementing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s instructions for mainland officials to “fully support” the city in its anti-pandemic efforts.
A source with knowledge of the meeting said participants had discussed the main bottlenecks Hong Kong was facing amid an overwhelming surge in coronavirus cases.
“Who is in charge of what and talking to whom in the [Hong Kong] government was clearly defined at the meeting,” the source said.
The source added that the battle against Covid-19 was now the top priority for all central government agencies in Hong Kong, and that all relevant mainland departments had been ordered to speed up their assistance.
No Hong Kong officials attended Wednesday’s meeting.
Over the weekend, Hong Kong and mainland authorities agreed to set up a number of joint anti-pandemic task forces and all of them had since been formed, the source said.