Testing capacity in Germany will be increased by up to factor 10 to up to 400,000 a day (!) by doing pooled testing. E.g mix 16 samples and if negative - all are negative, otherwise binary search for the positve(s). Could of course be used worldwide.
since many are asking: the article did not provide details about the exact method. In the article, they talked only about pools of 5 but that would not allow a 10x scale factor. So I assumed pools of 16 in my Tweet. Maybe @CiesekSandra can share more details.
I guess the "pooling strategy" is important for the scale factor. I live in a household of 4. If we would test we would not even really care who tested positive since we then would assume we all get it anyway. So it is all or none anyway.
important note👇 and in addition, there might be practical, logistical, organizational reasons why this might not happen after all.
