Related papers: A strategy for finding people infected with SARS-C…

Background: Worldwide demand for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing is increasing as more countries are impacted by COVID-19 and as testing remains central to contain the spread of the disease, both in countries where the disease is emerging and in…

Antigen test kits have been used extensively as a screening tool during the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). While it is generally expected that taking samples for analysis with PCR testing gives more reliable results than…

There are multiple testing methods to ascertain an infection in an individual and they vary in their performances, cost and delay. Unfortunately, better performing tests are sometimes costlier and time consuming and can only be done for a…

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, government policy and healthcare implementation responses have been guided by reported positivity rates and counts of positive cases in the community. The selection bias of these data calls into question…

During the early stages of respiratory virus outbreaks, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the efficient utilize of limited nasopharyngeal swabs for rapid and accurate screening is crucial for public…

The efficacy of an intervention can be assessed by randomizing patients to different diagnostic tests instead of directly to an intervention and control. This principle is applied by allocating individuals to intervention if the test result…

An accurate multiclass classification strategy is crucial to interpreting antibody tests. However, traditional methods based on confidence intervals or receiver operating characteristics lack clear extensions to settings with more than two…

We present a method for efficient estimation of the prevalence of infection in a population with high accuracy using only a small number of tests. The presented approach uses pool testing with a mix of pool sizes of various sizes. The test…

Testing is recommended for all close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 patients. However, existing group testing methods are oblivious to the circumstances of contagion provided by contact tracing. Here, we build upon a well-known…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on the well-being of the global population. The pandemic has been so prominent partly due to the high infection rate of the virus and its variants. In response, one of the most effective…

Measuring the prevalence of active SARS-CoV-2 infections in the general population is difficult because tests are conducted on a small and non-random segment of the population. However, people admitted to the hospital for non-COVID reasons…

Monitoring the incidence of new infections during a pandemic is critical for an effective public health response. General population prevalence surveys for SARS-CoV-2 can provide high-quality data to estimate incidence. However, estimation…

Genomic surveillance of infectious diseases allows monitoring circulating and emerging variants and quantifying their epidemic potential. However, due to the high costs associated with genomic sequencing, only a limited number of samples…

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…

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic infectious disease outbreak that has significantly harmed and threatened the health and lives of millions or even billions of people. COVID-19 has also negatively impacted the…

Large scale disease screening is a complicated process in which high costs must be balanced against pressing public health needs. When the goal is screening for infectious disease, one approach is group testing in which samples are…

The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish a regular infection survey that reports data on positive RT-PCR test results for SARS-COV-2 virus. This survey reports that a large proportion of positive test results may be based on the…

We analyze the effect of using a screening CT-scan for evaluation of potential COVID-19 infections in order to isolate and perform contact tracing based upon a viral pneumonia diagnosis. RT-PCR is then used for continued isolation based…

In order to identify the infected individuals of a population, their samples are divided in equally sized groups called pools and a single laboratory test is applied to each pool. Individuals whose samples belong to pools that test negative…

Globally the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has infected more than 59 million people and killed more than 1.39 million. Designing and monitoring interventions to slow and stop the spread of the virus require knowledge of how many people have been…