Pre-print of the paper with details of the methods, etc: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.26.20039438v1.full.pdf
Similar methodology, but with pools of 10:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20043513v1.full.pdf
Peer-reviewed paper with pools of up to 96 samples for avian influenza:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2878216/
None of this is surprising given that...
1) The threshold for detecting the (very similar) SARS virus was 37~4000 copies per mL (depending on the platform—this suggests that choice of platform will be critical for this to work well) https://jcm.asm.org/content/42/5/2094
2) Patients with COVID-19 generally have 10,000 to 1,000,000 copies per swab. Not sure how many mL per swab, but not many I suspect: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2196-x_reference.pdf
3) PCR uses primers to selectively amplify only the target RNA. The presence of other RNA is not really a problem
...
Put it all together and here is the argument: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.27.20043968v1.full.pdf
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Pre-print of the paper with details of the methods, etc: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.26.20039438v1.full.pdf
Similar methodology, but with pools of 10:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20043513v1.full.pdf
Peer-reviewed paper with pools of up to 96 samples for avian influenza:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2878216/
None of this is surprising given that...
1) The threshold for detecting the (very similar) SARS virus was 37~4000 copies per mL (depending on the platform—this suggests that choice of platform will be critical for this to work well) https://jcm.asm.org/content/42/5/2094
2) Patients with COVID-19 generally have 10,000 to 1,000,000 copies per swab. Not sure how many mL per swab, but not many I suspect: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2196-x_reference.pdf
3) PCR uses primers to selectively amplify only the target RNA. The presence of other RNA is not really a problem
...
Put it all together and here is the argument: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.27.20043968v1.full.pdf