Related papers: Testing the efficacy of epidemic testing
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.…
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…
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…
Sample pooling consists in combining samples from multiple individuals into a single pool that is then tested using a unique test-kit. A positive test means that at least one individual within the pool is infected. Here, we propose an…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is an urgent global challenge. The rapid geographic spread of SARS-CoV-2 directly reflects the social structure. Before effective vaccines and treatments are widely available, we have to rely on…
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…
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,…
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…
Testing is a crucial control mechanism for an epidemic outbreak because it enables the health authority to detect and isolate the infected cases, thereby limiting the disease transmission to susceptible people, when no effective treatment…