“The situation was a bit serious, with many inbound travellers with symptoms held up at the airport waiting to be tested,” said Larry Lee Lap-yip, the Health Authority’s deputy hospital chief executive.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in more than 3 million confirmed infections worldwide, and more than 200,000 deaths. Hong Kong has recorded more than 1,000 cases, four of whom have died.

The team assigned to convert the expo halls included about 40 doctors and 36 nurses, as well as administrative staff, information technology professionals and cleaners.

Working from a plan designed by the authority’s infectious disease experts, doctors and nurses, they set up separate areas in the hall for patients and medical staff.

The facility was designed to handle six to eight people per hour. Once tested, they had to wait several hours for results and, if positive, had to be sent to hospital or, if cleared, start 14 days of mandatory home quarantine.

The centre needed proper infection control measures, and that meant paying close attention to every detail, including the toilets.

Toilets for medical staff had to be separated from those used by patients, and engineers made sure there was no danger of cross-infection via the ventilation from the patients’ toilets.

to have their nasal and throat swabs collected for testing in hospital laboratories.

Chau Lai-ching, a nurse at Yan Chai Hospital who volunteered to work at the testing facility, said she had to tell people their results.

Those who tested negative were relieved to be able to return home to start their two-week quarantine.

It was hard to break the news to those who tested positive and had to be sent to hospital.

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“Many were long-distance travellers who had already spent more than 10 hours on their flights, before waiting several hours for their test results” she said. “Now those who tested positive had to wait even longer to be admitted to hospital.”

However, she said most patients did not complain and some thanked the nurses for helping to run the centre. “I felt encouraged working there,” she said.

Male nurse Ng Chun-yuen recalled a young man who became emotional when he was told that his result was positive.

He kept asking how he could have become infected despite taking all the proper measures and avoiding contact with others.

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The testing centre remained open until April 19. As the number of travellers to Hong Kong dropped sharply, the centre started testing people who were under home quarantine, including some who were contacts of close contacts of confirmed Covid-19 patients.

The Hospital Authority ran a second temporary testing centre at North Lantau Hospital until April 5, for those over 60 years old and children up to the age of 12.

Between March 20 and April 19 the two centres tested 1,400 people, of whom 104 were confirmed to have Covid-19.

Overall, 7.4 per cent of the total tested positive. Among travellers from the airport, 8 per cent tested positive, while 10 per cent of secondary contacts were found to be infected.

On March 26, the Department of Health set up a temporary specimen collection centre at the expo facility to collect deep throat saliva samples from mainly asymptomatic travellers. It said it collected around 15,000 samples by April 28.

Looking back at the experience of setting up and running the temporary expo facility, Cheng said he and his colleagues were glad to help prevent Hong Kong’s health care system from being overburdened by dealing with potential imported cases.