A pair of researchers at St. Joseph’s Hamilton Health Care, who want to help Ontario reach its goal of testing 25,000 people for COVID-19 every day, says combining coronavirus test samples could be the way to go.
Dr. Marek Smieja, an infectious disease physician-researcher from St. Joe’s, told Global News that taking multiple test samples from asymptomatic, low-risk subjects and putting them together to make one test sample could significantly increase the province’s capacity for testing. “In other words, take four samples, put them together in one, call it one test.
And as long as it’s negative, you’ve resulted four people,” said Smieja. “Of course, if it’s positive, then you have to go back to those four individual tubes.” Premier Doug