Scale of Covid-19 testing in other countries

The Philippines, which has South-east Asia's highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases, expanded its targeted testing in June to include patients and healthcare workers with no symptoms but who had a relevant travel history and had close contact with a confirmed case.

The government has resisted for months calls from various groups, and even allies of President Rodrigo Duterte, for mass testing - which means testing the majority of people. In a policy paper released by the Philippine General Hospital last month, it said that routine mass testing twice a month in the hospital was "not feasible" as it took more than four weeks to test some 5,000 healthcare workers.

After previously encouraging people without Covid-19 symptoms to get tested if they have been exposed to someone diagnosed with the coronavirus, the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention last month modified its guidelines to exclude people who do not display symptoms - even if they have been recently exposed to the virus.

Reuters reported that most US states rejected the new guidance and continued to recommend testing people who have been exposed to the virus and have no symptoms.

Ramping up its strategy, the Indian Council of Medical Research on June 23 called for testing to "be made widely available to all symptomatic individuals in every part of the country".

This marked a shift from its earlier approach of testing symptomatic individuals who meet the criteria, including being in contact with a Covid-19 case.

India's "aggressive testing" approach saw more than 12 million samples for the disease processed in the last two weeks, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday.

In all, the country of 1.3 billion people has performed more than 45.5 million tests since Jan 22, according to an update on the Indian Council of Medical Research's website yesterday.

The government is planning to introduce mass testing by the end of the year to cover even people with no symptoms, according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Generally, only people with symptoms are currently told to get themselves tested.

The Chinese territory began a free and voluntary universal testing exercise on Tuesday, and said about one-tenth of its 7.5 million people had signed up by the second day. The seven-day programme will allow Hong Kong to conduct up to half a million coronavirus tests per day, and can be extended to no more than two weeks.

Health experts advising the government have said that as many as five million people might need to be tested for the scheme to comprehensively uncover hidden transmissions and end the current wave of infections.

In February, South Korea was hit by what was believed to be the biggest outbreak outside of China.

But a programme of mass testing - which included drive-through testing facilities - and contact tracing helped contain the virus.