As schools attempt to bring students back to school safely, a game-changer might come out of central Illinois. The University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus has one of the most aggressive COVID-19 testing protocols among institutions of higher education in the country, as it aims to keep students
As schools attempt to bring students back to school safely, a game-changer might come out of central Illinois.
"Two percent of all the tests that happen in the country today will be by the University of Illinois," Chris Marsicano, founding director of the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College -- which is tracking higher education institutions' responses to COVID-19 -- told ABC News.Testing is just one part of UIUC's approach to halt the virus in its tracks.
Part of that plan was to administer mandatory tests frequently -- upward of 10,000 a day -- and cheaply, with quick turnaround times on results. Story continuesAll of this innovation comes at a cost. Implementing UIUC's testing capability, including modifying the veterinary lab for COVID testing, ran about $6 million to $7 million, Jones said. It's an investment for the near future.
Initially, the school thought they'd test once a week, but based on modeling, realized that twice a week would be most effective. If faculty, staff and students receive a negative result at least every four days, they get a checkmark in the app and can enter campus buildings with their school ID. Some bars and restaurants are also using the app to let students gain entry, Burke said.
"Hearing the way our school has handled coronavirus compared to other schools, I feel relatively safe," Kim said."Just seeing every school around us go down like flies, it feels like the last man standing kind of thing." The positivity rate had also increased in the days leading up to Sept. 2, from around 0.5% when students first returned to campus to a peak of 2.86%. That day, the school announced it would be going into a two-week lockdown, with only essential activities like food shopping and getting tested permitted, to help curb the recent rise in cases.
As the testing capacity has increased, the lab has also experienced a bit of a slowdown in turning around results, with some taking up to 48 hours, Smith said. The university has recently introduced robotics, with plans to add more, to help accelerate and streamline the lab work. Smith is also helping to run monthly risk surveys to help narrow down who is most likely to get the virus."Right now we're fishing in the ocean, and we'd rather fish in a pond," Smith said.
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