Hong Kong's Hospital Authority announced on Thursday to start using a community isolation facility to receive mild patients of COVID-19 as the daily additional cases hit another new high of 118.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government's Center for Health Protection (CHP) reported 111 additional local infections and seven imported cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in Hong Kong to 2,250.

Out of the new local cases, more than 60 are related to previously confirmed outbreak clusters, Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the CHP's Communicable Disease Branch said at a media briefing on Thursday afternoon.

The seven imported cases involve persons with travel history to the Philippines, India and Japan, according to Chuang.

Linda Yu, a chief manager of the Hospital Authority, said at the briefing that as of Thursday afternoon the death toll of COVID-19 in Hong Kong has risen to 15.

Currently 716 confirmed patients are hospitalized in 14 hospitals across Hong Kong, including 33 in critical condition and 14 in serious condition. The occupancy rates of negative pressure rooms and isolation beds in public hospitals are 76.9 percent and 74.6 percent respectively, Yu said.

At a press conference on Thursday morning, the Hospital Authority said it had decided to start using the community isolation facility at Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village to receive suitable patients with particular clinical conditions in order to alleviate the demand for the isolation beds in public hospitals.

About 30 COVID-19 patients who are in the process of recovery will be admitted to the facility on Friday.

This is the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong that a community isolation facility is used to receive mild patients.