COVID-19 tests which were previously sent to the UNH lab in Durham will now be sent to UNH’s lab in Manchester.
The change was made on January 13. The Keene State COVID team testing coordinator, Nicole Feml, said the change was made because the Durham lab was struggling to keep up with the positivity rate, as they are handling several other contracts including elderly care homes. Feml said that although tests will be sent to a different lab, the turn around window for results will be just as fast, if not faster than before.
Students who have accessed their test results from the first week of the semester may have noticed a change in phrasing for the results. Those who receive a negative test will be logged as “not recommended for diagnostic testing,” and those who may be positive are logged as “recommended for diagnostic testing.” Feml said that the change in wording reflects how the tests that come back positive are sent from the Manchester lab to the one in Durham to confirm the result. So far, Feml said all tests that were marked positive by Manchester have been confirmed by Durham, meaning there have been no false positives yet.
Testing compliance among students and faculty is at 97% according to Vice President of Enrollment and Student Engagement MB Lufkin. Although compliance is good, there are systems in place to ensure everyone on campus gets tested. At the end of each testing day, the testing staff will look at who was scheduled to be tested that day and anyone who missed their designated testing day will be notified that they need to be tested within 24 hours.
Faculty and staff who fail to get tested will be referred to Human Resources and students will be referred to the conduct office on a case-by-case basis, Lufkin said. Students may also have their owl cards locked should they fail to get tested, which would prohibit access to residence halls and the dining commons. However, Lufkin said this has not happened to any students this semester, nor have they received any complaints on the policy.
“We want to give students every opportunity to get tested before we go that far,” Lufkin said. She added that with the highly transmissible nature of the Omicron variant, policies like these are really “the best way to make sure we stay safe.”
Out of all the people who were tested during the pre-arrival testing period, Feml said 26 tested positive out of an approximate 2,900 tests.
Although the Owls will be facing a new variant this semester, Feml said the school’s approach is no different than before. “We’re doing things this way because we know it works,” Feml said. She noted that while students and faculty were on winter break, 184 tested positive in a month off campus, compared to the 194 total positive cases from the fall semester on campus.
The school is also considering self-swabbing COVID tests. President Treadwell said this is something the school is “piloting” with faculty and staff.
Previously, Treadwell has told The Equinox that she believes classrooms to be some of the safest locations on campus. She stands by that comment and added that the reason the first week of classes was remote was to ensure an equitable transition among students. “To avoid confusion and panic for those who might not have known their result on Tuesday, we decided to move everyone online,” Treadwell said. That way, she said, faculty would also have predictability.
Students were required to get tested over the weekend before returning to in-person classes. The school has now resumed weekly testing.
Hunter Oberst can be contacted at
hoberst@kscequinox.com
