GROUP TESTING FOR LARGE-SCALE COVID-19 SCREENING

ABSTRACT

The demand for test kits needed to identify infected individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic is steadily increasing, and many countries are already in short supply. The limited availability of these test kits makes the testing capacity of a large population very limited. To optimise the use of the available testing capacity, we study two group testing strategies expected to considerably reduce the required number of test kits. For each strategy, two problems are addressed: the minimisation of tests required to investigate a targeted population and the maximisation of the size of the tested population subject to a given testing capacity. We mathematically formulate both problems and provide the optimal pool size formula associated with each strategy. Real and simulated case studies are presented to assess the efficiency of both strategies. We provide evidence that the best strategy to be used during the screening process depends on this pandemic’s prevalence rate.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 screening
• group testing
• resources optimisation
• pooling design

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Professor Taicir Loukil and Mr. Mohammed Amine Kamoun for their valuable comments which helped us to improve the paper.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.