Pool Testing: How It Works And Why It Might Be Important For Schools And Businesses As The Coronavirus Pandemic Continues To Spread
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Pool testing allows samples from groups of 3-50 people.
The idea here is to find people who are asymptotic or pre-symptomatic before they pass COVID-19 to anyone.
So here's how this works. The group will be tested and samples are collected. This batch or pool combines the samples and tests them all at once for the virus. If it comes back positive, everyone in the group must isolate until individual results come back. If negative, the group is done.
Now it's not perfect as doctors say someone who is no longer infectious but has viral particles could turn a sample positive and someone early in the illness may not have enough virus particles to turn the sample positive.
This has been considered for back to school and back to work efforts because you can test more people more often including from Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Quest Diagnostics who tests samples says they should have this technique at two of their labs by the end of the week.
Pool testing is happening in other countries currently. Experts in the US say we could jump to have millions of people tested per day with this technique.