SBU uses expanded testing to monitor COVID-19

photo: Connor Raine/The Intrepid

By Peter Byrne

ST. BONAVENTURE, NY — Before the start of the fall 2020 semester, St Bonaventure University publicly made it their mission to keep students safe from COVID-19 when they return to campus, and throughout the semester.

Prior to arriving at the university, each student was required to test negative COVID, and every student did just that. 

After a successful first two weeks, the school decided to test all 533 of its student-athletes.

Of those tests, 532 came back negative, and the athlete who tested positive then produced back-to-back negative results.

As a result of the testing, the school stated that it would implement a return-to-play action plan.  

Although there have been promising results up to this point, would only student-athletes would be tested?

Thomas Missel, SBU’s chief communications officer, said that the university would begin testing non-athletes, as well.

On Monday, SBU began testing non-student-athletes for the first time since they got to campus.  

“For now, we are using our Sophia rapid testing antigen machine for our surveillance testing of students,” Missel said. “We may integrate some PCR testing with the county’s assistance as time goes on. The goal is to test 20 students every day.”

Since everyone’s return to campus, it has been university’s main goal to keep their students safe during this unusual time.

Missel explained that testing was necessary not only before the semester, but also surveillance testing just about three weeks in.

“We just believed that, along with the mandatory test to come to campus, surveillance testing during the semester was worth doing to gauge our control of the virus on campus,” Missel said.  

It was big news around campus how well the results of student-athlete testing came back last week.

However, the question of whether only student-athletes would get tested came up.

Missel said it was important that athletics get tested because of the nature of close contact practice, and they had to meet higher NCAA-mandated standards regarding.

Therefore, it was important to test student-athletes early in the semester so they could begin their practices as soon as possible.   

“The excellent results that athletics announced last week was a tremendous first sign to give us some confidence that we have a pretty good handle on the situation so far,” Missel said. “That’s a significant cross-section of the student population who all tested negative.”

With the restrictions set from the university since the arrival on campus, there should be no reason to believe the results of these tests will be poor.

And possibly, with another flurry of negative tests, the school can lift some of its COVID-19 restrictions and attempt to take another step in retuning to normalcy.