Evaluation of Group Testing for SARS-CoV-2 RNA

Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong; Daniel Klein; Brendan Hickey

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint Across 55 countries with available matched case and testing data [15] , the estimated number of tests required to duplicate the existing testing effort (at country-observed prevalence among tested individuals) exclusively using the given method is provided. When examining how many countries are optimized by each strategy, however, 40% (24 of 55) of countries save the most tests using the 96-well plate strategy. Choosing the best strategy per country results in a total of 670,849 tests, the vast majority of which are saved by the 384-well plate and 96-well plate strategies. Data from different countries are across a range of dates (3/5-3/20) as number of tests are not systematically reported. * Case counts were not recorded by [15] on the same day as test counts for Turkey, Kyrgyzstan [12] , Hong Kong, Mexico [11] , and New Zealand, are obtained from source and [15] , and are excluded from global estimates. We infer zero cases in Turkey from the date reporting tests (3/10/2020) and first case date (3/12/2020) and exclude two probable cases in New Zealand.