Abstract

The Coronavirus pandemic set off a flurry of research and reports on a wide range of concerns for the health sciences. One of these concerns has been an interest in effective monitoring, tracing, and testing of the disease on a mass scale. The acute and emergent nature of the crisis precipitated a need not only for greater monitoring capacity, but one which could scale at a mass level and at a reduced cost. The reduction of costs was crucial not only for greater efficiencies as capacity was taxed, but also for prevalence testing in low income and developing countries. This paper offers a review of the pooled testing literature around the Covid-19 pandemic, identifying developments in the field as well as paths forward for new variants or future public health emergencies.

Keywords:COVID; Cost-benefit analysis; Prevalence testing; Batch testing