Israeli group urges sample pooling to speed up testing

Rambam Medical Center and Technion University in Haifa says they have come up with a faster and more efficient way to test people for the novel coronavirus, by pooling samples.

According to the hospital, by testing the samples of 32 or 64 patients at a time, it can quickly rule out who has the virus. Only in cases where the virus is found will the individuals in the pool take tests to determine who is carrying COVID-19.

They say in a statement that the method was able to flag a sample in which there was one carrier out of 64.

Pooling has been used since World War II and was suggested in the 1990s as a way of testing for HIV.

“There are indeed some logical difficulties in deploying the method, but we hope it can up the number of tests and find even silent carriers, those with no symptoms. This possibility can lower the chance of infection and flatten the curve,” says Technion Professor Roi Kishoni.