Trump admin allows group Covid-19 testing
The Food and Drug Administration has granted the first emergency use authorization for pooled coronavirus testing for Covid-19.
The approach involves combining samples from multiple people, which are only tested individually if the batch comes back positive.
The FDA said that Quest Diagnostics will now be able to group up to four samples together. This is aimed at easing the current testing crunch driven by the spike in new infections.
What it means: Pooled testing isn't a silver bullet — for instance, it's not appropriate for communities where outbreaks are widespread, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.
But in areas where the prevalence of the virus is low, pooled testing can reduce consumption of scarce testing resources on people who are not likely to be infected but need to be screened before they can return to work or school.
"This EUA for sample pooling is an important step forward in getting more Covid-19 tests to more Americans more quickly while preserving testing supplies," Hahn said. "Sample pooling becomes especially important as infection rates decline and we begin testing larger portions of the population."
Pooled testing has been used during the current pandemic in several other countries, including China, Germany, Israel and South Africa — and has been used in the U.S. for other infectious diseases, such as HIV.
What's next: HHS testing czar Brett Giroir has said that pooled testing could help increase the country's testing capacity to 100 million per month by September, up from about 20 million in the past month.
