Alexandra Nowak, a spokeswoman for VCU Health, said the hospital is “exploring all of our options to make testing more readily available for our patients, and are actively working on developing our own test at VCU Health.”

“Given the spread of COVID-19 worldwide and in the United States, we expect that the need for testing will only increase,” Nowak said.

Physicians are first ruling out flu before testing for COVID-19 because the state is still in the midst of a worse-than-normal flu epidemic, said Dr. Bill Petri, professor in the division of infectious diseases and vice chairman of the department of medicine at the UVA School of Medicine.

Petri said the shortage of test kits means it’s likely that Virginia is identifying only the most severe cases of the virus so far, and that the real number of infections is at least five times the 17 identified as of Thursday.

“I think probably right now everyone with a fever and cough should be tested and we don’t have enough tests to do that yet. And everyone exposed to someone with a known case of COVID-19 should be tested, and we’re not there yet,” Petri said, noting that labs are working to create tests. “In Virginia, testing capability is going to catch up, probably catch up right in the nick of time.”