On Oct. 1, the SUNY website issued a press release statement regarding an announcement made by SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras and SUNY Adirondack President Kristine D. Duffy that involves the newly expanded testing protocols for student testing. The expanded procedure includes that each student will be tested once every two weeks.
Thus far on campus, pooled testing has a specific number of students take a saliva swab test with their samples in an individualized tube recorded at the time. Students would only have to retest if a positive case is detected out of the number of people in that specific pool. This procedure is conducted to test mass numbers of students in order to help document accurate results in the campus community, according to a previous article published by The Lamron.
“Individuals administer the test themselves, swabbing their mouths and provide the saliva samples to Upstate Medical. Their samples are combined into one, which is tested for COVID 19 virus,” Dr. Steve Radi, medical director of Geneseo’s Department of Student Health & Counseling, said. “A positive test for the pool would mean each individual saliva sample within the pool would need to be tested again individually to pinpoint exact positive cases … This greatly accelerates the process and expands testing capacity”.
Adirondack’s new testing process has displayed great results as there have been no reported positive test results during pool testing, according to the press release.
“The pooled testing protocol was yet one more important health and safety measure that SUNY Adirondack implemented as part of our Safe.Smart.Ready planning,” Duffy said in the press release. “Daily health screening and checkpoints, widespread compliance for face coverings and social distancing, and reducing density on campus to 25 percent of a normal fall semester are all important measures that we hope will continue to keep our community safe.”
Prior to the latest press release, on Sept. 23, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Malatras announced that protocol involving the pool testing procedure was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for individual swab tests. This process is being developed by Upstate Medical and Quadrant Biosciences.
“By combining this groundbreaking individual saliva swab test with Upstate Medical’s state-approved pooled testing protocol, SUNY can now process 120,000 test samples per week in a single lab,” according to the press release.
SUNY Geneseo also started conducting pool testing of students in recent weeks, following the FDA’s emergency approval of this testing system.
“I think the advantage to the pool testing is that we can test more students more quickly and get results back,” Dean of Students Leonard Sancilio said. “But it's also cheaper than the individual test where the swabs are up your nose. This way it's just the saliva … So, the speed and the cost is an advantage to the other tasks.”
Sancilio said that with the Geneseo campus having over 5,000 students, the testing pools are naturally bigger for the sake of the school administration being able to contain the virus. This does not include the faculty. Students are given a time on a specific day as to when to go to the testing site and submit a saliva sample, located in the College Union Ballroom.
“I'm in support of [the new regulations]. I think it's a good idea to make sure that students that stay within the Geneseo community are tested,” Sancilio said. “The magnitude of the tests that work we're currently testing 500 students a week in order to get that number. This is the best way to do it.”