BELGRADE - As Serbia expands its COVID-19 testing to better trace and contain the coronavirus, Chinese technology is giving a helping hand with state-of-the-art equipment.

The new Fire Eye lab in Belgrade, the brainchild of Chinese biotech company BGI Group, has been receiving more than 2,000 samples per day since Wednesday.

By enabling Serbia to significantly boost the daily testing capacity to around 6,000 samples from last week's average, the lab helps authorities realize that the spread of the virus has been weakening, allowing it to decide on the gradual relaxation of strict measures and reopening of the economy.

By performing 96,637 tests since the beginning of the epidemic, Serbia had reported 9,362 cases of COVID-19 infection, with a death toll of 189 as of Saturday.