Authorities in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, have established a special task force consisting of senior medical experts from major hospitals to help cure patients and guide treatment in designated and makeshift hospitals in the city, a senior health official said.

These experts were from severe disease, infection, respiratory and related medical departments, plus departments of traditional Chinese medicine.

"We always put medical treatment first while continuing to make great efforts to implement and further optimize the prevention and control measures for COVID-19," said Zhang Yi, deputy director and spokeswoman of the Guangzhou health commission.

Departments would further strengthen the overall planning of medical resources and go all-out to block the spread of the novel coronavirus at the community level, Zhang said at a news conference on Wednesday.

To block the spread of novel coronavirus , Guangzhou has so far, opened a total of 19 makeshift hospitals with about 70,000 beds for patients with mild symptoms and asymptomatic carriers, Zhang said.

More than 11,000 infected people have been discharged as of the end of Tuesday, she said.

According to Zhang, Guangzhou reported a total of 7,970 local infections, including 39 detected at the community level.

Of the infections, 235 are patients with mild symptoms and 7,735 are asymptomatic carriers.

Haizhu district is still the main battlefield in the fight against the pandemic. Haizhu reported a total of 7,637 infections on Tuesday, with cases detected highly concentrated in the Kanglu, Datang and Longtan areas.

Su Mingqing, deputy head of Haizhu, said the district has decided to prolong its strengthened prevention and control measures against the novel coronavirus.

The measures require residents in high-risk and controlled zones to stay home, and the suspension of public transport services has played a role in blocking the novel coronavirus from further spreading at the community level in previous weeks, he said.

Li Guoxin, vice-president of Nanfang Hospital Affiliated to Southern Medical University, said his hospital has established about 500 beds for senior residents, pregnant women, children and severe patients.

Wang Zilian, vice-president of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, also said her hospital, a major hospital in South China, has so far sent more than 400 medical workers to the city's makeshift hospitals to guide the treatment of infections.