Schools try to reassure parents and students they can reopen safely, even if it means spending whatever it takes.
BOSTON — For students heading to Colby College in Maine this fall, coronavirus testing is expected to be a routine part of campus life. All students will be required to provide a nasal swab every other day for two weeks, and then twice a week after that. All told, the college says it will provide 85,000 tests, nearly as many as the entire state of Maine has since the pandemic started.
Colby, a school of 2,000 students, joins a growing number of colleges announcing aggressive testing plans to catch and isolate COVID-19 cases before they spread. Harvard University says all students living on campus will be tested when they arrive and then three times a week. Boston University plans to test most students at least once a week.
But whether colleges should be testing every student – and whether there’s capacity for it – is a subject of debate. Some colleges plan to test students only if they show symptoms or come into close contact with someone who has tested positive. But some researchers say that approach could quickly cause outbreaks caused by students who don’t show symptoms.
As universities hurry to make plans for virus testing, federal officials are warning that they could overload labs that process tests for hospitals. In a call with governors last Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said too many colleges are signing contracts with commercial labs, which threatens to “jam up the capacity” of the system.
Instead, Azar said colleges should develop testing operations in their own labs, especially at big research universities.
Colleges have been trumpeting testing plans as they work to reassure families that they can reopen safely. For some, it’s partly meant to signal that officials will spend whatever it takes to keep the campus protected.
“It’s first and foremost to provide a safe environment. But truthfully it’s also to give all of us comfort, to give our local community comfort, and to give our students and families comfort,” said Doug Terp, vice president for administration and chief financial officer at Colby. The testing plan will cost the college an estimated $5 million, he said.
But at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, officials argue that testing every student could “create a false sense of security.
