This article was updated to include new information about LabCorp Health and Stanford swimming test effort. show how the efforts Reopening pandemic mixed success in the United States, there are long lines for trial COVID-19 ratios were, and the lack in some places. One solution could be the testing pool, to test a strategy, already used in China, Germany, Israel and South Africa for a large number of people in a short time. The idea is to more in order from each COVID-19 test a small amount of material from each person, the sample scooping them on a single sample ‘and the execution of the test, that the combination. If the sample is negative, then there is a good chance that all the people who have contributed to this negative sample for COVID-19 When the pooled sample is positive, then go back and technicians test each sample to determine separately or positive. This strategy is a kind of triage test, and could provide the test kits and testing more efficient. “You can get more people to more frequent testing,” says Oliver Laeyendecker, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. Peter Iwen, director of the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory, testing pool saw as a way to preserve valuable for the necessary chemical reagents COVID-19 test-that have been made and continue to work only as demand for testing kicks. He knew that the pooled test had been tested for sexually transmitted diseases effectively in the past by blood banks, and thought, “there was no reason why it should not work for COVID-19,” he says. In mid-March Iwen he puts his idea to the test. some testing racing, take each time a sample from a patient with confirmed COVID-19 has very low was in the amount of sample of the virus, and adds four other samples were negative for COVID-19 He took advantage of the US Center Disease Control (CDC) COVID-19 test, and despite the small amounts of virus, every time it was able to bring the positive sample. He presented his data to the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which must confirm and approve diagnostic tests, all patients back generated results. He received the encouragement of his results, but no definitive answer as to whether he can start with the pool testing for COVID-19 champions. “I have a fast response needed,” he says. “We were always short [on reagents]”. Then he decided Iwen, monitors its data to the Governor of Nebraska, in an effort to speed things sent and received approval of the Governor to begin with laboratory tests pools of Public Health Iwen. A few days later, he and FDA approval in the beginning of each pool of five test samples. Iwen began with the March 24 test pool, and says he is working to get infections when Nebraska COVID-19 tally were relatively low. But he had begun on April 25, as a percentage of positive samples in the lab to the stop climbing. He says that the month pool tests, however, allowed him enough store reagent to remain open and continue to test for COVID-19 Test was actually a positive performance rate of 10% that Iwen says “for tying in my head is a bit ‘high. ” So what are the ideal conditions for testing pooled? The pool of test success depends on a number of different factors. The first is the prevalence of COVID-19 in a given population. If SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, is widely circulating in a particular group, the pooled samples would be positive and technicians have already test all organized separately for making inefficient tests. But if infection rates are low, the chances of a positive result of pooled samples’ is low enough that it is worth pooling. If the test rates are also low in these populations, so check in pool is more efficient because it allows more people with fewer laboratories for testing resources. It is a strategy, carried out with some success in HIV testing. Chris Pilcher, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco in the Division of HIV, infectious diseases and global medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, a pioneer of the method in North Carolina, with its public health laboratories in the first year 2000. it is now used by a number of cities, including San Francisco and New York. When an infectious disease, such COVID-19 wildfire, says Pilcher, then the US and the largest in the world, according to test still fire brigade emergency phase as much as possible and isolate the cases in which they have found. Once the raging fire is contained, there are still embers and smoldering fires doused and recognized need. test pool can be a way to get the infection to identify landscape oversee these new outbreaks as quickly and as efficiently as possible before they flare up into major epidemics. A study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases accepted and published online, modeled Pilcher and his team, as it could be effectively pool test COVID-19 They found that the strategy could increase efficiency by examining anywhere from two to 20 times the number of samples with respect to each test. “I think [testing pool] is something that is necessary,” says Pilcher. As people work, school and large group activities could return pool tests be a way to make regular tests without the overload laboratory network. Employers, schools, nursing homes and hospitals can do the test again at regular intervals, people want to protect against infection in order to guarantee and are based on test pool would make it possible. One concern that experts have COVID-19 commissioning test samples in common is that the studies so far suggest suggests that the amount of virus in these samples, in particular those who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, sometimes extremely low. take a small portion of a sample that has already a low amount of detectable virus and mixing with other samples the concentration of detectable virus is further diluted. In comparison, many people with HIV viral loads are still very high in the early stages of infection, says Dr. Jennifer Rakeman, Assistant Commissioner and head of the laboratory for the New York City Public Health Laboratories, a part of New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. So even if the samples are collected, there is plenty of detectable virus to pick it up for the test. In the laboratory of New York 16 HIV-samples are diluted in general brought together in a single sample. use the smaller pool sizes, but found Iwen can detect small amounts of SARS-CoV-2 Champion in 19 COVID but admits that “we are still trying to understand all the details.” Since incidence of COVID -19 in many parts of the country is high and still climbing, is the largest part of the United States is not yet ready for testing in the general population pool in the city, for example, or certain region. But Iwen says decrease as reagents, collected from selected populations of evidence that must be still tested a small risk might make sense. For example, residents in a nursing home, the precautions to be taken to protect them and not be able to see the outside visitors at low risk of infection to be. But because residents in the nursing home are at high risk of serious illness, obtained when infected, they still need to be tested regularly, could provide the staff to take care of all people with the virus and to set the insulation measures right place, to prevent the spread of the disease. In such situations, Iwen says, “putting into common selective according to me is really the answer.” Stanford Healthcare Clinical Laboratory Virology, which processes more than 4,500 COVID-19 trials of each day alone July 27 “pool tests started such an approach is most useful when the repeat routine testing in living areas come together such as the structures of assistance is needed or dorms, “Dr. Christina Kong, responsible for the disease to health and Stanford professor of pathology at Stanford Medical School, said in a statement announcing the use of pooled testing laboratory. “Go ahead with the tests in the pool is to take our skills on this type of testing in the Bay Area to quickly find a new outbreak.” Iwen also says that when the laboratories know where a group of samples from them smarter decisions could help determine when to use the pooled test. “If this field of monitoring sample of asymptomatic football team, for example, there would be at most one or two samples are expecting positive. But the test if a packaging field samples of meat factory in which 30% is already positive result , the highest risk, and I treat it as such and not use pool. “on July 25, LabCorp, a leading diagnostic companies the world, has received emergency approval from the FDA pool tests begin with, if necessary, on five samples simultaneously. “Testing Pool is required to reduce the number of tests in some populations, laboratory supplies optimize test and increase test capacity,” the company said in a statement announcing the approval. In New York, the city public health laboratories, scientists are currently exploring testing pool in a specific area, but where small amounts at higher risk of infection tests. “We go back and look at the data for the number of positives that we get, and if we had collected samples, we would have chosen, must,” says Rakeman. “We can use this information as to share with the future.” In large part, the goal for laboratory reagent supplies to preserve. “Pooling the 70% or so can save in reagents, whether it is right to do,” says Iwen. to determine the collection of data when and where necessary pool tests can take time and effort, but could pay work; a much more efficient COVID-19 test method is an important tool for controlling the pandemic in the United States “that stuff there to find out would be possible, but there is a better way to be,” says Iwen. “I do not think we have much to wait any longer.” Picture copyright by Getty Images BPS
As pool Test for Crown could help test more people in less time
