Photo taken on Feb. 28, 2022 shows the construction site of the community isolation facility in Tsing Yi, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The construction was completed on Monday with the support of the Chinese mainland. Commenced on Feb. 22, the construction of the community isolation facility is the first one to be completed since the fifth wave of the epidemic, able to accommodate over 3,900 patients after being put into use. (Photo: China News Service/Li Zhihua)

The construction of a makeshift hospital to treat COVID-19 patients started on Sunday in Hong Kong with the support of the central government after a temporary bridge linking Lok Ma Chau Loop and Shenzhen city was completed.

About 200 construction managers and 1,700 workers from China State Construction International Holdings, the contractor for the emergency hospital, were present at the launch event Sunday.

To ramp up efforts to build more virus-treatment facilities, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government announced earlier that construction work would be carried out at nine locations with the full support of the central government.

Among them is the makeshift hospital at Lok Ma Chau Loop, which involves the building of a hospital with 1,000 beds, as well as quarantine rooms that can accommodate 10,000 people. 

To increase the number of community isolation and treatment facilities in Hong Kong a number of the mainland-aided facilities have been constructed and put into use within a short period of time which were supported by China's central government.

On February 28, a temporary community isolation and treatment facility, or mobile cabin hospital, for COVID-19 patients in Tsing Yi was constructed within a week as the first mainland-aided cabin hospital project in Hong Kong in combating this latest strong resurgence of the Omicron variant in Hong Kong.

The facility is able to provide more than 3,900 beds when fully put into operation, according to a statement sent by China State Construction International Holdings to the Global Times.

All the nine projects aided by the central government will provide a total of 50,000 beds and significantly increase Hong Kong's COVID-19 infection cases' isolation capacity, wrote John Lee, Chief Secretary for Administration of Hong Kong in his blog on Sunday.

 "Some new facilities will be built in March and others in April or later. With the increase in isolation facilities and large-scale mass testing, Hong Kong is able to put the epidemic under control and achieve zero COVID-19 cases," he wrote.