Bibliographic information
GuidelineWHO guideline on public health and social measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza
Year of Publication2026
Issuing InstitutionWorld Health Organization
Recommendation
New
WHO suggests against mass testing in community settings to reduce the transmission of influenza viruses during influenza epidemics and pandemics.
Recommended against
Conditional
Certainty of evidence
Very low
Notes and Remarks
- Mass testing may be implemented using any laboratory or over-the-counter test with sufficiently high sensitivity and specificity, which includes laboratory PCR tests and over-the-counter lateral flow tests such as RATs. If available at scale, over-the-counter tests could be used to facilitate the self-testing of symptomatic or asymptomatic individuals in the community. Test results can then inform subsequent behaviours or further actions such as mask wearing or isolation of infected individuals from the community to reduce virus transmission.
- Mass testing can be considered as an approach for reducing the community transmission of influenza viruses during periods of high prevalence if a low-cost test with reasonably high sensitivity and specificity is available.
- Implementation should only be considered if there are sufficient resources and capacities to test at large scale, and to handle positive individuals and their close contacts.
- Where disease prevalence is low, mass testing may be more beneficially targeted to specific subpopulations or settings.
- The effectiveness of mass testing alone is small and requires the implementation of other measures such as isolation of positive individuals and potential quarantining of their close contacts.
- If prevention or suppression is the objective, a highly sensitive test would be required and the cost-benefit ratio may be extremely high.