Testing Students Twice Weekly — And Reinforcing Behavior: Brown University VP Carey LIVE
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Brown University Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey appeared on GoLocal LIVE, where he talked about the school’s robust testing program — and what they have seen so far this fall.
“Testing’s been an important part of our overall strategy, [along with] the public health campaign we’ve had on campus, and the de-densified population — we’ve changed to a three-term model rather than our two academic semesters, which has allowed us to spread students out over the fall, spring, and summer,” said Carey. “All of those things, in particular the behavior of our community to follow public health guidance and to really take it seriously, has contributed so far to what has been quite successful.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“As you noted, we’ve done 83,000 tests. Our strategy has been to do high-frequency asymptomatic testing on a weekly basis,” said Carey. “For example, all of our undergraduate students, whether they live on-campus or off-campus, are required to be tested twice a week. Many of our faculty and staff who are frequently on campus are required to be tested twice a week. Anyone else who is on campus for any reason who might not be on campus as frequently is tested once a week.”
“That has helped us I think do two things,” said Carey. “One is stay on top of positive cases for COVID, because then we can immediately contact those individuals, have them isolate, contact trace — we do that ourselves in coordination with the Department of Health — and quarantine people who are confirmed contacts.”
“The other thing is reinforce behavior,” he added. “Every couple of days — every two to three days — all of our students are going to get tested. There’s plusses and minuses to that, because it can become a routine that’s hard to keep up, but I think it also reinforces the importance and seriousness of the disease.”
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