Related papers: Group testing as a strategy for the epidemiologic …

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…

COVID-19, a viral respiratory pandemic, has rapidly spread throughout the globe. Large scale and rapid testing of the population is required to contain the disease, but such testing is prohibitive in terms of resources, cost and time.…

The usual problem for group testing is this: For a given number of individuals and a given prevalence, how many tests T* are required to find every infected individual? In real life, however, the problem is usually different: For a given…

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…

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…

COVID-19 has resulted in a global health crisis that may become even more acute over the upcoming months. One of the main reasons behind the current rapid growth of COVID-19 in the U.S. population is the limited availability of testing kits…

The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the novel corona virus has an exponential rate of infection. COVID-19 is particularly notorious as the onset of symptoms in infected patients are usually delayed and there exists a large…

A key requirement in containing contagious diseases, such as the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, is the ability to efficiently carry out mass diagnosis over large populations. Some of the leading testing procedures, such as…

We consider a novel method to increase the reliability of COVID-19 virus or antibody tests by using specially designed pooled testings. Instead of testing nasal swab or blood samples from individual persons, we propose to test mixtures of…

Fast testing can help mitigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Despite their accuracy for single sample analysis, infectious diseases diagnostic tools, like RT-PCR, require substantial resources to test large populations.…

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…

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…

Repeated asymptomatic screening for SARS-CoV-2 promises to control spread of the virus but would require too many resources to implement at scale. Group testing is promising for screening more people with fewer test resources: multiple…

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 cataclysmic contagion based calamity -- Covid-19 has shown us a clear need for a comprehensive community based strategy that overcomes the sheer complexity of controlling it and the caveats of current methods. In this regard, as seen in…

Pooled testing offers an efficient solution to the unprecedented testing demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, although with potentially lower sensitivity and increased costs to implementation in some settings. Assessments of this trade-off…

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…

In comparison with individual testing, group testing (also known as pooled testing) is more efficient in reducing the number of tests and potentially leading to tremendous cost reduction. As indicated in the recent article posted on the US…

The spread of COVID-19 makes it essential to investigate its prevalence. In such investigation research, as far as we know, the widely-used sampling methods didn't use the information sufficiently about the numbers of the previously…

We propose `Tapestry', a novel approach to pooled testing with application to COVID-19 testing with quantitative Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) that can result in shorter testing time and conservation of reagents…