Coronavirus testing: how countries’ figures and approaches to Covid-19 tests differ to the UK For every million people, Switzerland has carried out 15,347 tests, while the UK has done 2,300

“Test, test, test” was the message from WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in mid-March in response to Covid-19, but the reality for many people is that it’s extremely hard to know if their country is following that advice nearly three weeks later.

Testing data can be hard to come by, with some countries not producing it, producing it at irregular or protracted intervals, or producing unclear data.

For instance, Germany produces their test data weekly, meaning the current deaths and confirmed cases counts don’t match – they’ve been backdated to that point in this analysis, as have numbers in France.

The i newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

Meanwhile, countries like Denmark and Sweden reveal the numbers of people they’ve tested, not the numbers of tests that have been run. This means there will be a minor vertical discrepancies between these countries and others, as some people have to be tested multiple times.

Finally, some countries do not make testing numbers readily available, most notably China, who’ve been accused of deliberately hiding the scale of the epidemic in their country.

How do different countries compare?

Countries have differed greatly in the approaches they adopted while testing, as in many cases countries simply did not have the capability to screen easily and aggressively.

The data shows that the UK is testing at a far slower rate than some countries, but it’s not alone, and many countries are struggling to scale up testing. The country faced ongoing criticism that healthcare workers need to and are not receiving the tests they need, with Business Minister Alok Sharma facing questions on the topic from journalists at the latest daily press briefing. The government has pledged repeatedly to rapidly increase testing, but faced challenges from a lack of crucial reagents, and laboratory testing capacity.

A comparison to the US, where testing has also been a major issue, reveals that the US reached a key marker that the epidemic was escalating, 10 deaths, far earlier than the UK. Testing was slow to start in the United States, with the country now rapidly increasing its capability in light of the growing pandemic. But despite running around a million tests, the US is not far past the rate of testing that the UK is, due to its much larger population and sluggish start.

Canada, which is earlier in the epidemic than both the UK and the US, has scaled up testing much more effectively, running tests at three times the rate of the UK. Canada scaled up testing while also targeting it, requiring people have a combination of symptoms – one or more of a new cough, fever or difficulty breathing – and be considered a risk due to travel to a place of concern or contact with someone who is positive for the virus. The country has also prioritised anyone with respiratory symptoms who is hospitalised, lives in a nursing home, healthcare workers or is part of an outbreak.

Switzerland currently appears to be by far the most successful of countries in the later stage of the pandemic, testing its population at a rate higher than any other country, and much earlier in the outbreak. Switzerland initially began systematically testing people who had travelled from high risk areas or anyone who had come into contact with an infected person in February, but this eventually fell away, and the approach became testing high-risk groups such as those with an underlying condition or the elderly, and people with severe symptoms, still a much more comprehensive strategy than the UK.

Testing is crucial to limiting the spread of the outbreak, clearly seen in the differential rates of testing in Italy and South Korea. South Korea seems to have limited the total number of deaths to under 200, while Italy scaled up later, and has experienced more than 12,000 deaths, but both now have similar overall rates of testing .

South Korea has been testing both widely and specifically, and started early, and is one of the few countries that tests without strict restrictions. It implemented indiscriminate testing early on, along with rigorous contact tracing, finding everyone who had come into contact with someone who tested positive, testing those individuals, and then testing anyone that those positive people had been contact with as well.

Germany’s approach to testing has been to introduce mass testing, scaling up the number to carry out huge amounts regularly, and looking to test 500,000 people a week. The total number of tests actually carried out, however, has not been confirmed since last week. That means they’re early in the epidemic, but are currently better prepared than many other European countries.

Japan’s approach has been to test on a smaller scale, and with strict restrictions, leading to criticism that the figures are not representative of the country’s real outbreak scale. It requires patients to have had a fever for more than four days and unless the patients are elderly, have other underlying health conditions, or must be connected to someone who has tested positive.