Public health officials set up a national hotline for people who think they might have the virus. States have set up web pages with locations for coronavirus testing, which has mostly been taking place in hospital wards set apart from regular emergency rooms.

It hasn’t been perfect — there have been lines at some clinics and complaints about communication. But anyone with symptoms who has traveled through countries with an outbreak of the virus, or who might have come into contact with someone who did or who seems sick, can be tested at a wide variety of locations.

There is even a drive-through clinic in South Australia that will let you stay in your car for a swab, a model also used in South Korea.

Planning has been similarly robust in Canada. Health care is normally provided by the provinces there, but after the SARS outbreak, the federal government established an agency to coordinate and help finance testing and treatment during any kind of viral or disease outbreak.

A national laboratory was expanded to become the clearinghouse for tests, which are conducted in some provinces by local authorities.

As in Australia, all medical tests are free under Canada’s public health system, and on Thursday morning, a lawmaker with responsibilities for federal health care told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that there were currently enough test kits for 16,000 patients.

So far, Canada has 103 confirmed cases and has performed 642 tests.

In the United States, little if anything about the process has been efficient or convenient. Tests have been slow to arrive across the country, in part because of a manufacturing problem, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.