Israel Approves Combinatorial-Pooling Tests for COVID-19

The Israeli Health Ministry has approved the 'combinatorial pooling' testing method that enables diagnostic labs the capability to simultaneously analyze nose and throat swabs taken from multiple people, helping conserve the supply of reagents necessary for the testing process, reported Haaretz on August 23, 2020.

A new study, Efficient high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 testing to detect asymptomatic carriers, published in Science Advances on August 21, 2020, found 'P-BEST's algorithmic method provides an efficient and easy-to-implement solution for increasing testing capacity that can be easily integrated into diagnostic laboratories.'

"P-BEST can be configured on the basis of the carrier rate," said Dr. Noam Shental, head of the OUI Computer Science Division. "The lower the carrier rate, the higher efficiency.