FSU Receives Grant for COVID-19 Testing
posted by Naomi Stevens | September 4, 2020 | In NewsResponding to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and concerns of disease spreading, Fayetteville State University arranged free COVID-19 testing provisions to FSU and the surrounding community through grant funding from late July to early September at the campus and other locations.
The testing dates are on Fridays and two Tuesdays, which started on July 24 at Simon Temple and will end on September 11 at FSU’s School of Nursing. Despite the primary testing location being FSU campus, there were other locations chosen, such as Kingdom Impact Church on Murchison Road, and Mission Field Ministries on Black and Decker Road in Hope Mills.
“We are trying to get a good cross-section of people from Fayetteville. We’re trying to make sure that everyone has access to testing, and so, if you choose one location, you just attract a particular type of people that come to that particular location. So, it’s important to go to a different location so you can access different people,” Dr. Afua Arhin, Dean of FSU College of Health, Science, and Technology said.
On the first day, between 100 to 120 individuals showed up, and it’s been consistent ever since. Since first starting, they’ve done up to 1,500 tests. According to Dr. Arhin, in percentages, close to about 6.5% of the tests turned up positive while about 93.5% were negative.
“If the student tested positive, we’d reach out to them and let them know, and we collaborate with the health department. So, the health department also talks to the students and does all the contact tracing… We also deal with the Student Health Services.”
When first starting, the wait for test results was substantial, because the United States was out of the reagents used for proper testing. Fortunately, the situation improved, so it only takes about 3 days for faculty, staff, students, and parents to get their results back.
The FSU Student Health Services are left to handle on-campus students should any of their results return as positive.
The testing procedure is done with the use of a swab that goes up the nostrils of the patient’s nose. How far the doctor goes up in the nares is labeled on the swab. When in the nostrils, the swab is rotated a little, and once the mucus collected, the swab is put in the specimen container and sent to the lab. There are no forms of anti-body testing, such as blood testing, done currently.
The grant funding was received from a created partnership of UNC Board of Governors HSMI Committee and the N.C. Policy Collaboratory at UNC-Chapel Hill, and as a result, FSU Cares (COVID-19 Assessment, Research & Emerging Science) was established on the FSU campus.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.