The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has sent a high-grade mobile lab to its branch in Beijing's Fengtai district to aid in testing for the novel coronavirus, it said on June 17.

The lab and 14 China CDC employees left for Fengtai CDC on Wednesday morning. The biosafety protection level-3 lab can handle 1,000 testing samples daily, and also will serve as a reference lab for nucleic acid testing of the virus in the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, the China CDC said.

Before this mission, the lab and its testing workers had helped conduct testing in other key areas of COVID-19 epidemic control, such as in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province and Jilin city in Northeast China's Jilin province.

The outbreak, which is linked with a wholesales market in Fengtai district, resulted in 137 confirmed cases as of Tuesday over six days, with the district hit hardest. Prior to the outbreak Beijing had reported no new confirmed cases for nearly two months.