“Drive-thru” coronavirus testing is to be introduced on the NHS - with suspected cases swabbed in their own cars.

The new scheme is part of efforts to relieve pressure on ambulance and hospital services, amid concern they could soon be overwhelmed by the number of tests they are carrying out.

It comes as around 32 Britons and other European nationals, who spent weeks trapped on a coronavirus-stricken cruise ship in Japan, returned to the UK to spend a fortnight in quarantine in the Wirral.

They have so far tested negative for Covid-19, the illness brought on by coronavirus.

But David and Sally Abel, a couple from Northamptonshire who were diagnosed with coronavirus on the ship and are currently being treated in a Japanese hospital, have since been told they have pneumonia.

Their son Steve Abel said in a YouTube video late on Friday evening that his father's condition was "very serious", while his mother has a more mild form of pneumonia. The couple have criticised the conditions at the hospital.

Although just nine people have been diagnosed with the virus in the UK, the NHS has now carried out 6,152 tests on suspected cases.

Each case can keep an ambulance off the road for up to eight hours, with each vehicle having to be decontaminated before it can be used again.

Now the NHS is to ask patients with suspected coronavirus to drive to health centre car parks, with nurses in Hazmat gear swabbing them through a rolled-down window.

The scheme, being pioneered by a London trust, comes alongside the rollout of “home testing” for coronavirus - with nurses and doctors increasingly asked to visit patients at home to collect their samples.