Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

June 4, 2021

Implementing Mandatory Testing and a Public Health Commitment to Control COVID-19 on a College Campus

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  • [Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A report from George Washington University, a large urban university in Washington, DC, highlighted the institution’s successes in mitigating the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among students and staff. Mitigation measures included development of a dedicated rapid and high-throughput COVID-19 laboratory, weekly and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 testing, and daily risk screening and symptom monitoring. During the fall 2020 semester, 220 of 38,288 tests (0.5%) performed were positive. Temporal clusters of positive cases mirrored community spread with increases associated with holiday gatherings, while positivity remained lower on campus compared to national statistics and there was little evidence for transmission among persons on-campus. The authors conclude that these results demonstrate the feasibility of on-campus surveillance and public health control of COVID-19. 

Liu et al. (June 3, 2021). Implementing Mandatory Testing and a Public Health Commitment to Control COVID-19 on a College Campus. Pre-print downloaded Jun 4 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.30.21258071