Serbia has opened the first of two new COVID-19 testing laboratories, partly funded with donations from the Chinese company behind the biggest testing labs in the city of Wuhan, the BGI group.

The new facilities will together have the capacity of processing up to 3,000 additional samples a day, more than double the previous combined testing capacity of all the labs in Serbia.

The testing laboratory in Belgrade, dubbed "Fire Eye Lab" is now the biggest in the Balkans for detecting COVID-19 and can process up to 2,000 samples a day. The smaller second lab will be located in the southern town of Nis and will be ready in the next few weeks.

The laboratories will remain operational after the coronavirus crisis and will be repurposed to diagnose other diseases. Terence Xiong, vice president for global development at BGI, said: "This laboratory today detects the coronavirus Covid-19. But, it can easily be transformed into a laboratory detecting other pathogens, like flu or other viruses or even other pathogens."

China had already sent help to Serbia in the form of protective equipment and medical experts in late March, only a few days after the country declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic.