HN Explorer

Coronavirus testing using binary search method

5 points by SailingSperm ↗ HN
Would getting fluid samples from 2 groups of say 50 people, combining the samples and testing that, then keep halving and testing recursively the groups that return positive, be a viable way of testing large sums of people with far fewer tests than individual person by person tests.

I'm not very familiar with all the tests run, but surely something like this could be applied to the antibody one?

Would love to hear if anyone with more knowledge of the testing process and capabilities could give their thoughts...

5 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 24.4 ms ] thread
danieltillett
Yes. There are a whole lot of approaches that are far more efficient way of doing pooled tests.

There have been around half a dozen pre-print papers published on this concept in the COVID-19 section of biorxiv in the past couple of weeks [0].

0. https://connect.biorxiv.org/relate/content/181

redis_mlc
Testing in the US is a waste of time because of our lack of coordination, and the very contagious nature of corona.

What point is there in testing somebody if they can catch it on the next trip to the grocery store? Do you test them after every grocery run?

Let nature run its course, like every other flu season.

MiroF
This kills considerably more people than the flu, please stop making the comparison.
[dead] redis_mlc
No, the ventilators are killing most corona patients. Get your facts straight.
el_dev_hell
> Let nature run its course, like every other flu season.

You could use that same logic to argue against random breath testing drivers.