More than 80 percent of workers had returned to the Chunfeng Tunnel construction site in Luohu District as of Monday amid tightening novel coronavirus (COVID-19) management measures aimed to prevent infection among workers, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

Among the total workforce of 193 people at the construction site, 73 have recently returned to Shenzhen after spending the Spring Festival holiday in their hometowns. Most of them are from Sichuan and Henan provinces, according to Chen Chunbin, the project manager of China Railway Tunnel Group, the contractor of the Chunfeng Tunnel project.

All of the 73 returned workers are required to go through a seven-day isolation period before having a nucleic acid test for COVID-19 conducted by Luohu District Hospital. So far 53 of them tested negative for the virus and have been allowed to join the 120 on-duty workers who remained working at the site during the Chinese New Year holiday.

Chen said the project contractor has set up an isolation area as required by the authority for returning workers and stepped up background checks on workers’ whereabouts before returning to Shenzhen.

According to him, workers are encouraged to have lunch and dinner at different times. Regular disinfection has been performed in the office area and dormitories, Chen said.

Currently, 208 meters of the 900-meter, double-decker Chunfeng Tunnel have been completed. According to the design, the upper deck of the tunnel is for eastbound traffic from Futian to Luohu while the lower deck is open to vehicles traveling from Luohu to Futian.

The tunnel is expected to ease traffic congestion on Chunfeng Flyover after it is put into service.

The Chunfeng Tunnel project is one of the city’s 17 major infrastructure constructions that have resumed work since the COVID-19 outbreak, which first started in Wuhan, Hubei Province in December.

Other major infrastructure projects that have resumed construction include the Outer Ring Expressway, the expansion project of Huizhou-Yantian Expressway, Banyin Passage, Guimiao Road and the Phase II of Guangzhou-Shenzhen Riverside Expressway, the Daily said.

According to the city’s transportation authority, 3,732 workers, or 83 percent of the total workforce of the city’s 17 major infrastructure projects, had returned to work as of Tuesday. Some 42,500 face masks have been distributed to workers at the construction projects.