BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Keeping their production lines running 24 hours a day, Chinese manufacturers are powering the fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Fang Hongxia, a worker of Xinli, a sanitary product company in Tianchang City, east China's Anhui Province, can pack 40,000 to 50,000 masks every day. Specializing in foreign trade, the company has canceled all foreign orders and concentrated its output on the needs of the epidemic control.
"The production lines have resumed work 24 hours every day at full power since Jan. 25," said Cai Fengfu, president of the company. "To ensure production, the city's economy and information technology bureau has assigned personnel in charge of the supply of raw and auxiliary materials and contacting technical teams for equipment maintenance."
A total of 68 enterprises producing emergency supplies in the province have resumed work as of Feb. 6, including 35 major manufacturers of protective suits, masks, disinfectants, and other products.
Cobes Health Care (Hefei) Co., Ltd., a medical products company in the province, increased its output of protective suits ninefold thanks to support from the government. "The government officials solved our worker shortage by coordinating local garment associations to organize workers from garment factories," said Xiao Yinglong, general manager of the company.
"We coordinated with east China's Jiangsu Province for raw materials, and with banks for 8 million yuan (about 1.15 million U.S. dollars) to help the company buy production equipment," said Shen Zhonglin, an official with the provincial economy and information technology department.
Yang Li, a worker of Xinhua Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in east China's Shandong Province, chose to work at the company during the Spring Festival holiday. She was not alone.
"Many of our employees gave up their vacation, helping increase the output by 30 percent," said Xing Zhongnan, the company's workshop director.
The province has a total of 26 mask manufacturers with a daily output of 2.64 million masks, which have all fully resumed work with other companies of medical products.
Companies in the province also started to develop new products targeting the needs of medical staff. A company in the province's city of Dezhou developed a new filtering system and put it into mass production in just eight days.
Manufacturers in non-medical industries were encouraged and supported to produce disinfectant and other medical products by the government. Jilin Boda Biochemical Co., Ltd. in northeast China's Jilin Province, a famous liquor producer, transformed itself into a disinfectant alcohol manufacturer in a short period of time.
"We reduced our profitable liquor production and changed to the production of disinfectant alcohol with a daily output of 50 tonnes after experts confirmed our products met standards," said Zhou Haishan, deputy head of the company.
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