⁍ This is the first Covid-19 diagnostic test in the United States to be authorized for use with pooled samples.
⁍ Sample pooling allows multiple people to be tested at once.
⁍ The FDA last month published guidance for developers that want to make and use tests for pooled samples.

– The FDA has given the green light to the first-ever use of a coronavirus test in the US using samples from as many as four people, the New York Times reports. The test, called the Covid-19, is designed to detect the virus, which has now infected more than 77,000 people in the US and killed at least 17 of them, according to the CDC. The FDA says it’s “an important step forward in getting more Covid-19 tests to more Americans more quickly while preserving testing supplies,” CNN reports. Health experts have long advocated the use of pool testing, which allows multiple people to be tested for the virus at once, according to the Times. “If you look around the globe, the way people are doing a million tests or 10 million tests is they’re doing pooling,” the White House’s official on coronavirus said last month. “Pooling would give us the capacity to go from a half a million tests a day to potentially 5 million individuals tested per day by those poolings.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/business/bunkers-new-zealand-intl-hnk/index.html