Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has admitted that gene testing for the new coronavirus will not be available immediately to everyone who wants it even after the nation's public health insurance programs begin to cover it shortly.

Abe was answering a question from Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Akira Koike at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, the country's parliament, on Tuesday.

Touching on remarks by Abe at a press conference on Saturday, Koike said many people have believed that they would be able to get coronavirus testing at any medical institution once the public insurance coverage begins.

While referring to the planned health insurance coverage, Abe said at the press conference that the government would secure capacity to allow all people to be tested for the virus when their doctors consider this necessary.

"We'll aim for that in the next phase," the prime minister told the Upper House committee meeting, adding that Koike had misread the policy.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, a parliamentary group led by the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and the JCP jointly submitted a bill to expand coronavirus testing operations to the House of Representatives, the lower chamber.

The bill is "aimed at allowing virus tests to be conducted in even mild and early cases when doctors find them necessary, even without mediation by public health centers," Kazunori Yamanoi, a member of the parliamentary group, said.

JIJI Press