Students returning to college campuses in Alabama this fall will have the “opportunity” to be tested for coronavirus before arriving on campus, and at least one university will require students to test negative before they are allowed to return.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s office announced Monday that the state will use $30 million in federal COVID relief funding to expand coronavirus testing on college campuses, and to lay the groundwork for having students and faculty return to campus.
The program is being designed and organized by the University of Alabama System, which includes the Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and Huntsville campuses, but the free testing would be offered to all public college students in the state.
“We are pleased to provide this new testing service to all public colleges and universities across our state. We appreciate the opportunity to work with Governor Ivey and her team to bring this project forward and help Alabama’s citizens during this unprecedented time,” UA System Chancellor Finis St. John said in a statement Monday.
Ivey’s office stated that funding would “enable every college student attending a public four-year and two-year college an opportunity to be tested prior to reentry to campus.”
Dr. Selwyn Vickers, Dean of the UAB School of Medicine and chair of the UA system re-entry task force, said the state also hopes to make testing available to students at private universities and colleges as well.
“That certainly will be our goal,” he said.
Vickers said the task force will recommend that the universities mandate testing for students returning for the fall.
“We will leave that decision to the institutions and their campus leadership,” Vickers said. “I think what we do know right now, obviously, that there are people who clearly get symptomatic and need to be tested. And there are clearly people who are asymptomatic, and that appears to be somewhat common in some of our college students, who have no symptoms and perceive they’re fine, and unfortunately spread the virus pretty significantly.
“So we’re not going to mandate what [the schools] do. We’re going to allow them to make decisions about how they manage that and what risks that poses when a student chooses not to [get tested] and decide how they will continue their curriculum.”
UAB President Ray Watts said that UAB will require students be tested before returning to campus.
“I can say from the standpoint of UAB, we will require this test for all of our students, and we will require them to practice the right safety guidelines and to use this Health Check [symptom tracker],” Watts said. “It’s easy to do.”
Watts said that college administrators throughout the state had been collaborating to develop reopening plans and he believed many other schools would follow suit.
“I can’t speak for the other universities and colleges across the state, but we have had discussions, we have had the presidents and other leaders together on Zoom calls like this as recently as last week on Friday,” Watts said. “And there’s been a lot of enthusiasm about certainly making this testing available to their students.”
Vickers said that students who test positive will be asked to quarantine for 14 days before reporting to campus. In addition to testing students before they get to campus, the funding will allow for “sentinel” testing throughout the semester, in which a percentage of students at each campus are tested even if they are not experiencing symptoms.
Vickers said the schools are being asked to create accommodations on campus for students who test positive during the semester.
“We’re asking each of the institutions to really create an infirmary or a site where students can be both isolated and quarantined during the time period for their recovery from their infection,” he said.
Watts said the UA system was collaborating with the Alabama Department of Public Health, and the University of South Alabama (which is not part of the UA system), HudsonAlpha and Kailos Genetics to facilitate testing in different parts of the state.
The testing will not be the invasive deep nasal swabs that most healthcare facilities have used so far to diagnose the disease, but less invasive nasal swabs or saliva tests.
Watts said the task force is also working with the Bruno Event Team and other logistics experts to coordinate widespread, if not universal, testing of the 260,000 higher education students expected to arrive on Alabama campuses for the fall semester. Details of the testing program are still being worked out and will be announced in the coming weeks.
State epidemiologist Sherri Davidson said that the testing would help identify students who may be asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 before they arrive on campus.
“This free testing program will help diagnose those who are sick, but more importantly identify individuals who may not feel sick at all and do not realize they are spreading the virus while in close contact with others,” Davidson said.
In addition to the re-entry testing, the UA system is planning to require use of an online symptom tracker and encourage use of a Bluetooth contact tracing app for students returning to campus. The symptom tracker prompts students and employees to report each day whether they are experiencing symptoms commonly associated with COVID-19.
The UA system is also rolling out an event passport tool that could be used to require people attending gatherings of more than 10 people to answer questions about their health status before arriving.
Vickers said the schools are committed to using whatever tools they have available to try and limit the spread of the virus when students return to campus.
“We know that it’s going to take a comprehensive effort,” Vickers said. “No one of these things alone will make a difference. Human behavior is fundamentally at the foundation of this, but we’re going to add all the tools possible to make this future and our fall workable for our students, faculty and staff, as well as our business community across the state of Alabama.”