USF starts randomized pool testing for COVID-19 testing on campus
TAMPA, Fla. - An innovative COVID-19 testing process at USF will be expanded from student-athletes to the rest of the campus, the university announced this week.
The process is called pool testing and is a form of randomized, group testing for the coronavirus.
"Instead of doing one individual and putting it into, what we call, a well, we put a sample of five individuals in the very same well, then test to see if anyone of the five in that particular well is positive," said Dr. Kevin Sneed, Dean of USF's College of Pharmacy. "Overall, by putting five samples per well, we can expand quite a bit the number of people that we do testing for."
Dr. Sneed said pool testing began with student-athletes because they were the first ones back to campus. That allowed researchers to refine the process.
Additional information can be found on USF's website.
"We'll [collect samples] in a different dormitory, in different locations and by doing it that way, we can kind of expand the number of people that we do test," he said, adding, "because the university is using its own labs, results are often back in up to seven hours. "We feel that early detection, very quick detection, quick isolation can help prevent the spread of anything that may happen on campus and I think right now our student body and our faculty and staff have really understood what we're trying to accomplish. We cannot control what they do off of our campus, but they can rest assured that with everything that we're doing on campus in terms of quick testing, quick identification and quick isolation if necessary, that we're doing everything we can to keep people safe while they're on our campus."
According to Sneed, this approach follows the American Athletic Conference’s requirement for student-athletes to be tested within 72 hours of competition.
At the end of the fall semester, researchers are going to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of pool testing and decide whether to continue it moving forward.