Hong Kong plans to roll out rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 to all its 7.5 million people in the near future, Reuters quotes city leader Carrie Lam as saying, as the increasingly isolated global financial hub tries to control a new outbreak.

Lam told reporters her government was working on increasing testing, contact tracing and vaccination capacity and making plans to send hospitalised asymptomatic patients to a quarantine facility reserved for close contacts as infections add up.

Amid worries of invisible transmissions in the city, Lam said the government was procuring tens of millions of rapid antigen tests, but did not specify when and how the government will deploy them for voluntary universal testing.