In a Friday morning interview with the Washington Post, Dr. Fauci said, “Something’s not working. I mean, what you need to do is find the penetration of infected people in your society. And the only way you know that is by casting a broad net.” He said that the White House Coronavirus Task Force is “seriously considering” a pool-testing strategy, though they have not yet decided upon it. In pool-testing, the swabs from ten individuals would be combined into one batch. A single test, if negative, could clear those ten individuals. If the test shows positive, then all ten are tested individually. Dr. Deborah Birx discussed this technique earlier this week at an online meeting of the American Society for Microbiology
Chinese doctors had used this strategy in Wuhan, testing 9 million individuals while using 6.6 million tests. While the strategy may reduce the amount of tests needed, it actually fits in more with a more aggressive top-down approach, used by the Chinese to attack the virus as if they were in a war. As such, they didn’t wait for an individual to request a test because they didn’t feel well; but, rather, they identified suspected areas of outbreak and pre-emptorily required tests of whole categories of the population.
