Penn State launches new Testing and Surveillance Center to conduct in-house asymptomatic testing
Penn State will conduct its own daily COVID-19 surveillance testing in-house after launching the Testing and Surveillance Center (TASC), the university announced Tuesday.
Before TASC’s opening, the third-party vendor Vault Health was often used at the University Park campus for its random asymptomatic testing of 1% of the daily university population. With its own center now, university President Eric Barron said testing availability and turn-around time should be improved.
“Coupled with other on-demand testing resources and our robust contact tracing program, this in-house testing capability will bolster the university’s multilayered approach to control the spread of the virus on the campus,” Barron said in a written statement.
According to the university, such testing will be initially done in “pools” of five, meaning five samples will be tested at once. If the samples all test negative, it’s time for the next pool. If the samples test positive, then each person in the pool will be retested individually to find who might have COVID-19.
Because such asymptomatic testing typically returns less than 1% of positives, pool testing is widely regarded as more efficient.
“Surveillance testing of individuals without COVID-19 symptoms allows the university to monitor positive asymptomatic cases and determine the need for additional mitigation steps,” added Suresh Kuchipudi, clinical professor and associate director of the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory.
It is not known why such a center was not opened before classes started Aug. 24, especially since it’s been in the plans since at least July. The faculty-based group Coalition for a Just University alleged the university did not initially have its own testing equipment for the in-house laboratory.
When asked Tuesday about the reasons for not opening earlier, or whether there were any supply-chain issues, the university responded with a written statement that did not appear to outwardly deny such claims. However, it emphasized that such a center was implemented as quickly as possible.
“Like many other higher education institutions, public entities, companies, etc. across the nation, the university has worked with multiple vendors to receive necessary supplies as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson said in a written statement. “Our process also involved hiring the needed manpower to manage the lab processes as well as establish the necessary collection site processes on campus. We wanted to assure that all pieces were effectively in place before initiating operations today.”
Surveillance testing will still be done by Vault Health at commonwealth campuses, along with faculty and staff at University Park. Students at University Park will be the largest beneficiaries of TASC.
If selected, University Park students will be contacted via email or text and are required to complete the free test within 48-72 hours. The first floor of the HUB Parking Deck is open for collection, and other quick-collection sites will be set up around campus.
According to the university, the sample is self-collected through a smaller swab, not the deeper swab used for symptomatic testing.
“The university has invested in staffing and significant automation of testing capabilities to increase the availability and improve turn-around time of our existing resources to meet the needs of this important surveillance testing component of the plan,” Barron said.
