MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The start of the spring semester on the Morgantown campus of WVU was much smoother thanks to changes and lessons learned from the fall, university officials said.
A key difference is the addition of the WVU Rapid Development Laboratory, according to Ted Svehlik, associate vice president of Auxiliary and Business Services for the university.
Svehlik said lab was built with $3 million in CARES Act funds approved by Governor Justice and can process hundreds of tests simultaneously. Shortening the turnaround time can limit quarantine, isolation and quickly identify asymptomatic COVID-19 spreaders.
“Spring semester we again conducted return to testing campus for our onsite students and personnel,” Svehlik said. “But, this time rather than testing in a three to four week period we were able to do that in a one week period.”
In the fall, there was a peak in transmission that resulted in nearly 90 students in isolation and nearly 1,000 in isolation. This time, the current decline in cases at the state level is consistent with the student population on the Morgantown campus.
“We currently less than one-third of the number of students in our isolation residences as we did in the fall peak,” Svehlik said. “We saw a rise in numbers during January and saw a peak of 37 students in these residence halls on February 3.”
The number of students in quarantine is about one-third of the total during the fall peak.
Now, the university will begin surveillance testing. Surveillance testing involves randomly selecting 10 percent of the campus population- students and faculty for weekly testing. According to Erin Newmeyer, executive director for Strategic Initiatives, samples will be taken from the sewer system at different locations around campus.
“It (testing) might be targeted based on wastewater results,” Newmeyer said. “If that team is performing symptomatic/asymptomatic students who are in certain academic programs that might have a higher risk.”
Approximately 240 faculty and staff are fully vaccinated and 200 more will receive the second dose by the end of the week. More than 800 faculty and staff have the first shot and 200 more will get their first dose this week. The university also has plans to vaccinate more than 600 students in the clinical level of the Health Sciences program.
“The students being vaccinated could also in turn become vaccinators themselves,” Newmeyer said. “That helps not only our vaccination efforts, but WVU Medicines’ and larger community efforts.”