Keene State College is receiving over $5 million in grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as reimbursement for the cost of COVID-19 testing for the campus community during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a January news release from the college.
Paul Miller, the director of strategic communications at Keene State, said in the release that the $5,847,714 FEMA Public Assistance grant will reimburse the college for purchasing 165,000 COVID-19 antigen tests between January 2021 and March 2022. Additionally, he said the college also paid for 1,328 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, as well as courier services for the tests to be transported to a laboratory for analysis.
According to fema.gov, FEMA’s Public Assistance Program provides supplemental grants to state, tribal, territorial, and local governments, and certain types of private nonprofits so communities can quickly respond to and recover from major disasters or emergencies.
So far, FEMA reported that it has provided more than $189 million in Public Assistance grants to reimburse N.H. for pandemic related expenses.
“With the health and safety of our community always being top of mind, the college made significant and ongoing investments to be proactive and to mitigate risks during the pandemic,” Keene State College President Melinda Treadwell said in the release. “The financial costs of all those actions were not insignificant, so this grant is critical to offsetting the expense of the protracted response and campus-wide testing.”
“FEMA is pleased to be able to assist Keene State College with these costs,” said Lori Ehrlich, FEMA Region 1 Regional Administrator in the release. “Providing resources for our institutions of higher education to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is critical to their success, and to our success as a nation.”
Piper Pavelich can be contacted
at ppavelich@kscequinox.com
