COVID-19: A Review of Random Testing as an Augmentation of a Close-Contact Testing Regime in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the world with a huge challenge to balance the health of the population with the scale of stringent response measures. Policy makers need evidence based recommendations to inform their response to the pandemic and the ever changing landscape it creates. Testing and isolation of infected individuals plays a critical role in containing the spread of the disease, but is aimed primarily at detecting symptomatic individuals. However, asymptomatic individuals are much more difficult to detect. This study presents the augmentation of a close contact testing regime with random testing to examine the elect on the number of COVID-19 related deaths