ArticleScience translational medicine2021
Using viral load and epidemic dynamics to optimize pooled testing in resource-constrained settings.
Article in Science translational medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Efficient high-risk human papillomavirus screening through pooled testing: a simulation study based on real-world data in low- and middle-income countries.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- The impact of pooling on the observed microbiome profile of preweaned piglet feces.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2025Article
- Enhanced testing can substantially improve defense against several types of respiratory virus pandemic.Epidemics · 2025Article
- Aggregating multiple test results to improve medical decision-making.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Optimization of Screening Strategies for COVID-19: Scoping Review.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Marginal effects of public health measures and COVID-19 disease burden in China: A large-scale modelling study.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Adaptive group testing strategy for infectious diseases using social contact graph partitions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Optimization of Population-Level Testing, Contact Tracing, and Isolation in Emerging COVID-19 Outbreaks: a Mathematical Modeling Study - Tonghua City and Beijing Municipality, China, 2021-2022.China CDC weekly · 2023Article
- Booster vaccination protection against SARS-CoV-2 infections in young adults during an Omicron BA.1-predominant period: A retrospective cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2023Article
- Singleplex, multiplex and pooled sample real-time RT-PCR assays for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in an occupational medicine setting.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Article
- Heterogeneous adaptive behavioral responses may increase epidemic burden.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- On-Site Viral Inactivation and RNA Preservation of Gargle and Saliva Samples Combined with Direct Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA on Magnetic Beads.ACS measurement science au · 2022Article
- Detecting Intact Virus Using Exogenous Oligonucleotide Labels.Analytical chemistry · 2022Article
- Evaluation of efficiency and sensitivity of 1D and 2D sample pooling strategies for SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR screening purposes.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Group testing via hypergraph factorization applied to COVID-19.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Modeling for COVID-19 college reopening decisions: Cornell, a case study.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Practical considerations to establish a validated platform for pooled detection of SARS-CoV-2 by droplet digital PCR.PloS one · 2022Article
- Safe and effective pool testing for SARS-CoV-2 detection.Journal of clinical virology : the official publication of the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology · 2021Article
- Optimizing and evaluating PCR-based pooled screening during COVID-19 pandemics.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Virological testing is central to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) containment, but many settings face severe limitations on testing. Group testing offers a way to increase throughput by testing pools of combined samples; however, most proposed designs have not yet addressed key concerns over sensitivity loss and implementation feasibility. Here, we combined a mathematical model of epidemic spread and empirically derived viral kinetics for SARS-CoV-2 infections to identify pooling designs that are robust to changes in prevalence and to ratify sensitivity losses against the time course of individual infections. We show that prevalence can be accurately estimated across a broad range, from 0.02 to 20%, using only a few dozen pooled tests and using up to 400 times fewer tests than would be needed for individual identification. We then exhaustively evaluated the ability of different pooling designs to maximize the number of detected infections under various resource constraints, finding that simple pooling designs can identify up to 20 times as many true positives as individual testing with a given budget. Crucially, we confirmed that our theoretical results can be translated into practice using pooled human nasopharyngeal specimens by accurately estimating a 1% prevalence among 2304 samples using only 48 tests and through pooled sample identification in a panel of 960 samples. Our results show that accounting for variation in sampled viral loads provides a nuanced picture of how pooling affects sensitivity to detect infections. Using simple, practical group testing designs can vastly increase surveillance capabilities in resource-limited settings.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.