Table 1.

 Technical levels for human influenza diagnostics

Level	End user	Features	Requirements
Point of care	Primary care hospital Emergency clinic Field/outbreak sites	Rapid result (hours) High sensitivity	Minimal infrastructure Low complexity
Referral hospital	National influenza laboratory	High sensitivity and specificity High throughput	Moderate infrastructure Screening in some cases, including in‐contact testing and follow‐up
Reference laboratory	Specialist research laboratories WHO Collaborating Centres/H5N1 laboratories	Gold standard sensitivity and specificity High throughput	State‐of‐the‐art infrastructure Complex tests, sequencing and analysis, reference reagent preparation, training Conduct sequencing, reagent preparation