Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Sep 15, 2020)
Date Submitted: May 29, 2020
Smart Pooled Sample Testing for COVID-19: A Possible Solution For Sparcity of Test Kits
ABSTRACT
Background:
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has severely affected a large number of people from all over the world. At present, there is no medicine available for its treatment. Adopting preventive measures to limit the spread of infection among the people is the best solution to this global health issue. The identification of infected cases and their isolation from healthy people is one of the essential preventive measures. In this regard, screening of the samples from a large number of people is needed, which requires many reagent kits for the detection of SARS-CoV-2. Data of COVID-19 testing for the screening purposes from various countries revealed that most of the tests were negative. Based on this data, the smart pooling of samples will reduce the kit consumption without affecting the outcome.
Objective:
The main objective is to find an effective method for the conduction of maximum testing for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis with less utilization of reagent kits.
Methods:
The available data of COVID-19 testing from different countries were evaluated by applying the simulators for the calculation of smart pooled sample testing size.
Results:
The simulation results show that the Test to Positive Ratio (TPR) is directly linked with the number of tests needed to test a population of 10,000. If TPR is low, the required tests will be low, and if TPR is high, then the required tests will be high. If the TPR is below 30, a significant optimization can be achieved, resulting in performing fewer tests for every 10,0000 population. The results also show that if the TPR is below or close to 10, a higher group size is more beneficial. Whereas a group size of 2 might be a better choice if TPR is 15 or above.
Conclusions:
The smart pooled sample testing may be quite a useful strategy in the current prevailing scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic. The application of algorithms to determine the appropriate number of specimens to be pooled for a single test would be a cost-effective solution for the screening of the community.
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