Accelerating COVID-19 testing: An experimental approach

The COVID-19 pandemic, ever since its global outbreak in 2020, has continued to wreak havoc. Governments across the world were compelled to enforce strict nation-wide lockdowns, while emphasising on social distancing and quarantining suspected people in order to slow down the spread of the virus. During this time, there was a massive increase in demand for COVID-19 test kits. However, given the limited supply, countries were finding it hard to test enough people. This study proposes an approach called Encoded Blending (EB) to increase the number of tests drastically, without increasing the number of test kits. EB modifies the pooled testing method; this has been followed by countries like Germany, Israel and South Korea for mass testing their citizens. EB has the potential to reduce test kits requirement by up to 85% and 80% in a population with 5% and 10% affected cases, respectively.