Efficient high throughput SARS-CoV-2 testing to detect asymptomatic carriers

Noam Shental; Shlomia Levy; Shosh Skorniakov; Vered Wuvshet; Yonat Shemer-Avni; Angel Porgador; Tomer Hertz

We developed P-BEST -a method for Pooling-Based Efficient SARS-CoV-2 Testing, using a group-testing approach, which significantly reduces the number of tests required to identify all positive subjects within a large set of samples (Figure 1) . Instead of testing each sample separately, samples are pooled into groups and each pool is tested for SARS-CoV-2 using the standard clinically approved PCR-based diagnostic assay. Each sample is part of multiple pools, using a combinatorial pooling strategy designed for maximizing the ability to identify all positive individuals (Figure 1 ) 5, 6 . If the percentage of carriers in the tested set of samples is sufficiently low (~1%), the method can correctly identify all positive individuals using a much smaller number of diagnostic tests as compared to testing each individual sample separately. In our current proof-ofconcept study of P-BEST, we pooled 384 patient samples into 48 pools, each containing 48 samples. Each sample was added to six different pools. Pools were designed based on a Reed-Solomon error correcting code, and were generated using an automated liquid dispensing robot.