Hong Kong, Feb 23 (IANS): Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), has said Hong Kong will conduct a mass mandatory testing in March to fight the latest Covid-19 outbreak when all Hong Kong residents must undergo nucleic acid tests three times.

As the central government has strengthened its support for Hong Kong, the sampling and testing capacity in the global financial hub is nearly 1 million samples a day, Lam said on Tuesday, adding that she believed the capacity will continue to increase and can cope with the mass testing.

She said the testing has a legal effect and there is a punishment mechanism for those who do not take part in it, Xinhua news agency reported.

Lam said hundreds of testing centres will be set up across Hong Kong and every resident is required to take the PCR-based nucleic acid tests every five or seven days. Between the three nucleic acid tests, people also need to do a rapid self-test every day using the rapid antigen test kits distributed by the HKSAR government.