Group testing as a strategy for COVID-19 epidemiological monitoring and community surveillance.

Brault, Vincent; Mallein, Bastien; Rupprecht, Jean-François · PLoS Comput Biol · 2021

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Abstract

We propose an analysis and applications of sample pooling to the epidemiologic monitoring of COVID-19. We first introduce a model of the RT-qPCR process used to test for the presence of virus in a sample and construct a statistical model for the viral load in a typical infected individual inspired by large-scale clinical datasets. We present an application of group testing for the prevention of epidemic outbreak in closed connected communities. We then propose a method for the measure of the prevalence in a population taking into account the increased number of false negatives associated with the group testing method.

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