LabCoP’s May ECHO session covered the key considerations for expanding COVID-19 capacity to the sub-national level and featured the Ethiopian experience. During this session, participants learnt about the need to scale up diagnostic capacity; governance and coordination issues essential for expansion of COVID-19 testing; leveraging on existing capacity to cope with the needs; strategies for COVID-19 testing scale up, including expanding laboratories and referrals, rapid assessment and selection of testing sites, and preparing sites for routine operations; integration of COVID-19 into existing programs such as HIV & TB programs; and follow up, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of new testing sites. Presentations were made by Dr Marguerite Massinga Loembé, Senior Laboratory Advisor, ASLM and Africa CDC, and Adisu Kabede, Ethiopian Institute of Public Health, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.