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Retrieved from Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill on August 19, 2020
Education Dive
Colleges' coronavirus testing strategies inconsistent: analysis
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Oct. 6, 2020
Dive Brief:
Only a quarter of colleges that enroll more than 5,000 undergraduates
and are offering in-person classes are testing for the coronavirus on a
mass scale or randomly screening students, a new analysis finds.
NPR, working with the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College,
which tracks institutional responses to the pandemic, examined data on
more than 1,400 schools and unearthed the testing inconsistencies.
Virus screening has been a linchpin of colleges' campus reopening plans, some of which have unraveled amid rising case counts.
Dive Insight:
Institutions that brought students back to campus this fall have wildly varying test strategies.
Some only screened students upon their arrival or if they had symptoms
of COVID-19. Others have been more aggressive, such as the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which tested students and faculty
twice a week but still saw a spike in verified cases. One recent study
suggested institutions would need to test every two days to contain the
virus.
Recurring testing is important, health experts have said, because it
enables colleges to find asymptomatic students and employees who are
spreading the virus.
But more than two-thirds of colleges NPR examined that had in-person
classes either lacked a "clear testing plan," according to the media
outlet, or were mainly testing students who felt ill or had been in
contact with someone who tested positive. Only 6% of the schools
analyzed were regularly screening all students, with most falling back
on testing only symptomatic students, NPR found.
Failure to monitor for the virus has consequences. Recent research
linked an uptick in case numbers to colleges that reopened campuses
this fall.
And NPR found that two-thirds of full-time undergraduates attending
college in counties that are coronavirus hotspots — meaning they have
25 or more average daily cases per 100,000 people — aren't on a campus
that requires regular or surveillance testing.
While cost has been a barrier to widespread testing, so too has shifting public health guidance.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially did not
recommend testing all students and employees as they came back to
campus. But the CDC recently reversed its stance, clarifying that
reentry testing could “prevent or reduce” transmission of the virus.
Testing random, asymptomatic people on campus could also help detect
outbreaks sooner, the CDC said.
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