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Northeastern to test students for coronavirus every three days
By adamg on Mon, 08/24/2020 - 9:18am
Northeastern University has increased its Covid-19 testing requirements for its students in Boston from every five days to every three days - after the students finish a round of three tests in their first five days back in the city.
Professors and other staffers who come onto campus will be required to get a Covid-19 test twice a week. Samples are being analyzed in a testing lab the school has set up at its Burlington campus; the tests themselves are self administered and less invasive than the back-of-nose ones more typical in community health centers.
The university says the increased testing is "a move designed to promote safety on the Boston campus and in the surrounding communities." Earlier this month, City Councilor Kenzie Bok, who represents the Fenway and Mission Hill, had asked Northeastern to keep its students home because of the risk to nearby residents.
Harvard is requiring students who live on campus to get tested three times a week as well, but other students - and staffers - are only "encouraged" to get tested at least once a week. However, Harvard is mostly only allowing freshmen to come to Harvard this fall - and they are required to live in campus.
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Comments
Testing Supplies and Results Turnaround?
I'm wondering where Northeastern is getting their test kits? Where are they sending the results to be tested? Isn't regular test result turnaround nine days?
Or is this like taking a blood pressure read where you average out what the results are? 2 positives and 1 no = positive.
I don't know where they're getting their supplies from but ...
They've built their own laboratory to handle all the test results, and to answer your next question, yes, they've been certified by the feds. BU also built its own lab to analyze samples. I guess it pays to have big bio-research departments.
Northeastern's lab is in Burlington; BU's is somewhere on their Comm. Ave. campus. Other colleges seems to be relying on the Broad Institute in Cambridge (which says it has built up the capacity to analyze way more samples than it's getting now).
I was told 2 days
I had a test done today because of travel. The info they gave me said results could take 4 days, but the testers said 2 days.
Results in one day
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Wish they were all so responsible
Thank you, NU. Wish BC and others were being so careful.
Finally
The entire country should have started doing this, or working towards it, back in April.
Public schools could open back up more closely to normal - and with so much less arguing- if they could test everyone 2x/week.
If only we ramped up testing capability when COVID became an obvious big deal. Back in Feb/March.
Outside of these large research universities that have their own labs, our testing options still seem disorganized and generally too slow and inconvenient to be extremely helpful.
Yes Yes Yes
America had the most advanced warning of any developed nation still has the worst response. (Brazil is even worse but they are a poor country run by a dictator. We are a rich country run by a dictator.)
There is no excuse. America had the time and money. The only thing lacking is a president and political party who would rather see 250,000 dead and the economy ravished rather than just follow the advice of medical experts.
This will go down as one of the darkest moments in America's political history.
I think it is great that they
I think it is great that they have this ability to run these tests. Although I still disagree with bringing students from around the country back to Boston. It sounds like an awesome way to infect a bunch of 20 somethings then release them back to their small towns where they can infect even more people.
With the tests. The colleges could have gone remote and offered their capacity to local school systems in yellow zones. I am not afraid for the Green zone folks, they have the ability to distance. The red zone folk should not be going back to school yet because no matter what it is not safe. Those yellow zone families though. They could benefit from regular testing.
The testing capability and
The testing capability and capacity did not exist until the plans were set in motion to bring students back. Without bringing the students back, who are presumably the ones funding these testing facilities with their tuition dollars, this testing capacity doesn't exist.