As the numbers infected by coronavirus rapidly escalate, governments are struggling to follow the lead of South Korea and Germany in rolling out testing on a large scale to help stem the pandemic.
The UK government, led by Boris Johnson, who is self isolating in Downing Street after contracting the virus, faces mounting criticism over the speed at which testing has been rolled out. In mid-March the prime minister told MPs that the UK would ramp up testing to 25,000 people a day and that National Health Service staff would be a priority. But the government revealed on Wednesday that only 2,000 out of 500,000 staff had been tested for coronavirus as the daily reported death toll from the pandemic in the UK rose to a record 563.
France, Spain and other European countries have also faced outcries about the lack of testing for doctors, nurses and social care workers, while global competition for testing equipment heats up.
