Related papers: Pooled testing and its applications in the COVID-1…
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.…
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…
Large-scale testing is crucial in pandemic containment, but resources are often prohibitively constrained. We study the optimal application of pooled testing for populations that are heterogeneous with respect to an individual's infection…
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread rapidly across the world, leading to enormous amounts of human death and economic loss. Until definitive preventive or curative measures are developed, policies regarding testing,…
We study the problem usually referred to as group testing in the context of COVID-19. Given n samples collected from patients, how should we select and test mixtures of samples to maximize information and minimize the number of tests? Group…
Group testing can help maintain a widespread testing program using fewer resources amid a pandemic. In group testing, we are given $n$ samples, one per individual. These samples are arranged into $m < n$ pooled samples, where each pool is…
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…
With the increasing spread of COVID-19, it is important to systematically test more and more people. The current strategy for test-kit allocation is mostly rule-based, focusing on individuals having (a) symptoms for COVID-19, (b) travel…
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…
An important component of every country's COVID-19 response is fast and efficient testing - to identify and isolate cases, as well as for early detection of local hotspots. For many countries, producing a sufficient number of tests has been…
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…
This paper presents methods to choose individuals to test for infection during a pandemic such as COVID-19, characterized by high contagion and presence of asymptomatic carriers. The smart-testing ideas presented here are motivated by…
In this paper, we consider the problem of designing optimal pooling matrix for group testing (for example, for COVID-19 virus testing) with the constraint that no more than $r>0$ samples can be pooled together, which we call "dilution…
We show that combining a prediction model (based on neural networks), with a new method of test pooling (better than the original Dorfman method, and better than double-pooling) called 'Grid', we can reduce the number of Covid-19 tests by…
Pooled testing is a common strategy for public health disease screening under limited testing resources, allowing multiple biological samples to be tested together with the resources of a single test, at the cost of reduced individual…
Detection of rare traits or diseases in a large population is challenging. Pool testing allows covering larger swathes of population at a reduced cost, while simplifying logistics. However, testing precision decreases as it becomes unclear…
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…
COVID-19 testing has become a standard approach for estimating prevalence which then assist in public health decision making to contain and mitigate the spread of the disease. The sampling designs used are often biased in that they do not…
We propose a mathematical model based on probability theory to optimize COVID-19 testing by a multi-step batch testing approach with variable batch sizes. This model and simulation tool dramatically increase the efficiency and efficacy of…
The COVID-19 crisis highlighted the importance of non-medical interventions, such as testing and isolation of infected individuals, in the control of epidemics. Here, we show how to minimize testing needs while maintaining the number of…