Dödligt virus från Kina orsakar panik (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19)

European countries should be able to test every person suspected of being infected with coronavirus and must intensify their efforts to do so, the World Organisation said on Wednesday.

Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO's executive director, said there was not currently a shortage of testing kits but that the choice by some countries to not systematically test all suspected cases of the disease was "one of the reasons that we’re behind on this epidemic."

Although countries in Europe have been scaled up their capacity to test for the virus in the last few weeks, some, including the UK, have come under fire for not testing enough people or for choosing only to test the most serious cases.

Testing capacity “comes down to what the strategy of an individual country is,” and whether they are choosing to test every suspected case, Dr Ryan said. “I believe every country in Europe does have the capacity to do that.”

More difficult is the process of identifying and warning all the people that an infected person has come into contact with, he added.

Dr Ryan’s comments came hours after the UK announced its intention to increase the number of people it aims to test to 25,000 per day within the month, up from around 7,500 at the moment. Public Health England said it would be deploying high throughput machines, which can process many more samples in one go than conventional machines, as part of the ramp up.

For countries to increase the number of tests they are running they must not only obtain enough testing kits but also scale up the capacity of the labs where samples are processed and ensure that the labs have enough staff members.