Only 11 laboratories of the 38 laboratories that had implemented testing indicated having validated the specificity of the implemented test against the six additionally known HCoVs and other common respiratory pathogens. For 15 laboratories, specificity validation was still in progress at the time of data submission. Seven laboratories indicated to have only partially validated the implemented test(s) while five laboratories had not (yet) performed any validation. The questionnaire was send out before the first 2019-nCoV cases appeared in Europe (Figure 1) and positive clinical specimens were assumed to be not available to the European laboratories. Therefore, the level of validation for clinical sensitivity was not assessed.