US FDA issues 1st Emergency Use Authorisation for pool testing

Washington : The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued the first emergency use authorisation (EUA) to Quest Diagnostics that allows COVID-19 pool testing for up to four individuals. Sample pooling is an important public health tool because it allows for more people to be tested quickly using fewer testing resources, Xinhua news agency quoted the FDA as saying.

Sample pooling does this by allowing multiple people - in this case four individuals - to be tested at once. The samples collected from the four individuals are then tested in a pool or "batch" using one test, rather than running each individual sample on its own test.