I'm trying to find a source for something I heard on the history channel probably 15-20 years ago. Something about during the mass enlistments of WWII, the medical processing couldn't keep up with everyone's testing for syphilis or something. So they would combine up to 6 peoples blood and test in batches. And only if one batch was positive would they test those 6 individuals separately.

There's talk of doing something similar with COVID testing, due to the shortage. Just curious if anyone has heard of this, or could help me find a source on the WWII testing.

Thanks.

They actually did blood tests for STDs? I thought that was what short-arms inspections were for.

Lab tech here- in drug testing we routinely "pooled" 4 urine samples and tested them together. If we got a suspicious sample we would retest all 4 samples individually. This was using an Elisa test. I was listening to Birx in the press conference a week or so ago and she stated that they had just given permission to labs to pool samples and I'm sure that this is what she meant.