BEIJING — Chinese nucleic acid testing agencies can process 51.65 million samples per day, the State Council joint COVID-19 prevention and control mechanism team said on April 17.

Mass nucleic acid testing has been an effective tool to spot COVID-19 infections in China and a stronger capacity will raise people's confidence to contain the epidemic, the team said in a statement.

Currently the country has 13,100 qualified nucleic acid testing institutions, and nearly 150,000 people work in this regard, the statement said.

In general, test results can come out within six hours and health departments have kept working on faster testing strategies.

Nucleic acid testing agencies are working with their maximum capacity to cope with the latest outbreak in Shanghai. The city has conducted several rounds of mass testing since early April, the team said.