Optimizing the diagnostic capacity for COVID-19 PCR testing for low resource and high demand settings: The development of information-dependent pooling protocol.

ABSTRACT:

Aim

To compare different pooling methods in an attempt to improve the COVID-19 PCR diagnostic capacities.

Method

We developed a novel information-dependent pooling protocol (indept), based on transmission of less informative sequential pools on to the next pooling cycle to maximize savings. We then compared it to the halving, generalized halving, splitting and hypercube protocols in a simulation study, across variety of scenarios.

Results

All five methods yielded various amount of test savings, which mostly depended on the virus prevalence in the population. In situations of low prevalence (up to 5%), indept had the best performance, requiring on average 20% of tests needed for singular testing across scenarios that were analy

SUBMITTER: Vukicevic D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7774501 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature