Related papers: Efficient identification of infected sub-populatio…
In the current COVID19 crisis many national healthcare systems are confronted with an acute shortage of tests for confirming SARS-CoV-2 infections. For low overall infection levels in the population, pooling of samples can drastically…
In this paper, we propose algorithms that leverage a known community structure to make group testing more efficient. We consider a population organized in disjoint communities: each individual participates in a community, and its infection…
In this paper, we propose algorithms that leverage a known community structure to make group testing more efficient. We consider a population organized in connected communities: each individual participates in one or more communities, and…
Background: Rapid testing for an infection is paramount during a pandemic to prevent continued viral spread and excess morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to determine whether alternative testing strategies based on sample pooling can…
Testing symptomatic individuals for a disease can deliver treatment resources, if tests' results turn positive, which speeds up their treatment and might also decrease individuals' contacts to other ones. An imperfect test, however, might…
Detection of defective members of large populations has been widely studied in the statistics community under the name "group testing", a problem which dates back to World War II when it was suggested for syphilis screening. There the main…
As humanity struggles to contain the global Covid-19 infection, prophylactic actions are grandly slowed down by the shortage of testing kits. Governments have taken several measures to work around this shortage: the FDA has become more…
When testing for a disease such as COVID-19, the standard method is individual testing: we take a sample from each individual and test these samples separately. An alternative is pooled testing (or "group testing"), where samples are mixed…
We develop a statistical model for the testing of disease prevalence in a population. The model assumes a binary test result, positive or negative, but allows for biases in sample selection and both type I (false positive) and type II…
Suppressing SARS-CoV-2 will likely require the rapid identification and isolation of infected individuals, on an ongoing basis. RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) tests are accurate but costly, making regular testing…
We consider outbreak detection settings of endemic diseases where the population under study consists of various subpopulations available for stratified surveillance. These subpopulations can for example be based on age cohorts, but may…
Group testing can save testing resources in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In group testing, we are given $n$ samples, one per individual, and arrange them into $m < n$ pooled samples, where each pool is obtained by mixing a…
Suppose that we are interested in the comparison of two independent categorical variables. Suppose also that the population is divided into subpopulations or groups. Notice that the distribution of the target variable may vary across…
Despite empirical risk minimization (ERM) is widely applied in the machine learning community, its performance is limited on data with spurious correlation or subpopulation that is introduced by hidden attributes. Existing literature…
The group testing problem asks for efficient pooling schemes and algorithms that allow to screen moderately large numbers of samples for rare infections. The goal is to accurately identify the infected samples while conducting the least…
Estimating the prevalence of a disease is necessary for evaluating and mitigating risks of its transmission within or between populations. Estimates that consider how prevalence changes with time provide more information about these risks…
A simple, but ``classical``, stochastic model for epidemic spread in a finite, but large, population is studied. The progress of the epidemic can be divided into three different phases that requires different tools to analyse. Initially the…
We propose a novel testing and containment strategy in order to contain the spread of SARS-CoV2 while permitting large parts of the population to resume social and economic activity. Our approach recognises the fact that testing capacities…
This paper is based on the observation that, during Covid-19 epidemic, the choice of which individuals should be tested has an important impact on the effectiveness of selective confinement measures. This decision problem is closely related…
Gathering observational data for medical decision-making often involves uncertainties arising from both type I (false positive)and type II (false negative) errors. In this work, we develop a statistical model to study how medical…