Workers are seen at a workshop in Longhua science and technology park of Foxconn Technology Group in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, Feb. 22, 2019. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)

Foxconn Tech, Apple's biggest contract manufacturer, announced on Tuesday it has hired top Chinese epidemiologist and leading government medical adviser Zhong Nanshan to be the chief adviser of its epidemic prevention and production resumption.

Zhong, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and his team will offer guidance free of charge to assist Foxconn to recover from the production suspension brought about by COVID-19, according to the company.

China's leading manufacturers have been ramping up efforts to resume production amid the deadly novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak on the premise of sound epidemic prevention. It is critical to assist them to get back on track since the suspension of each sector could cause associated impacts to the whole industry chain around the world, experts said.

It is reasonable that the company chose to hire top professionals to guide epidemic prevention tasks since if even one employee got infected, it would have significant impacts, Fu Liang, a senior industry expert, told the Global Times.

As a representative of manufacturing sector in the country, Foxconn has nearly 1 million employees and over 30 manufacturing parks. It started from the island of Taiwan, and has developed in the Chinese mainland for 32 years, according to the statement.

The company has been rolling out measures to promote its production resumption. For instance, one of its subsidiaries established a mask production line with an estimated daily output of 2 million units by the end of February, and the company on Saturday started to organize nucleic acid testing at its Shenzhen factory in a bid to enhance the prevention level.

Enterprises are gradually resuming production, and these mature firms could also adopt flexible production arrangements to fill priority orders, Fu said, stressing that further risks brought about by the evolving epidemic situation outside of China should be given more attention, as they may cause new problems with the supply chain and transportation.

Share markets around the world have plunged over concerns about the economic impact caused by the epidemic, with the Dow plummeting nearly 900 points on Tuesday.

Against the backdrop of globalization, Apple's shares slid 3.39 percent on Tuesday (US time). The US tech giant on February 17 announced that it does not expect to meet the revenue guidance it provided for the March quarter due to the temporarily constrained supply chain and the affected demand for its products within China.