Kunming, capital city of Southwest China's Yunnan province, will send 300,000 protective masks free of charge to residents to help ease the market supply shortage, according to the city's authorities for prevention and control of novel coronavirus pneumonia.

The face masks were distributed to residential community offices in the city proper on Sunday afternoon and community offices will hand out the masks to local residents, said Wang Bing, vice-mayor of Kunming.

He said more free masks will be supplied and handed out to locals, step by step.

On Jan 26, the second day of the Chinese Spring Festival, the city government started to organize all local plants and factories to return to production and workers have worked overtime to make defensive materials such as masks, alcohol, and disinfectants to ensure good results in the prevention and control of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus, the vice-mayor said.

"We arranged for local clothing factories to produce masks and other protective materials and in the meantime, increased overseas procurement of medical materials from Thailand, Vietnam, India and other south and southeast Asian countries," the vice-mayor said.