They took a long time to decide it was a national priority. At the point when Korea started heavily ramping up its testing program, most Western countries took roughly the same approach they took during SARS, where they contact traced and tested only the few cases they knew about with the expectation that'd be enough.
I am unable to find any reliable data that shows the ramp up of testing capacity after deciding its a national priority by country. What is the basis for 'similarly quickly' ?
Sibling comment to your original comment seems to suggest US wasn't able to 'similarly quickly' due to lack of onsite manufacturing.
Even the article suggests this,
> The country was testing people for the virus at the fastest pace in the world
I can't find the data off the top of my head, but in the middle of March the US was able to ramp up from barely 1k tests a day to 100k within a week or two. It's my understanding that Germany went comparably fast.
