Nick Wilson,1 Ayesha Verrall,1,2 Len Cook,3 Alistair Gray,3 Amanda Kvalsvig,1 Michael Baker,1 (1epidemiologists, 2infectious disease physician, 3statisticians)
In this blog we raise ideas for how New Zealand might optimise testing to both identify cases in the community as part of the COVID-19 elimination strategy, and to confirm when the virus has been completely eliminated from the country. These are urgent issues to clarify in order to minimise time spent under lockdown conditions and allow the economy and health system to return to more normal functioning. The priority is to continue testing symptomatic people, with the sensitivity of case detection expanded by steadily broadening the case definition and ensuring wide geographic and demographic coverage. After that, testing to assess the elimination goal could involve testing of higher-risk exposed groups, potentially using pooled specimens and serology, along with sewage testing.