Winthrop University has introduced a rapid saliva-based COVID-19 testing initiative for non-symptomatic students, faculty and staff in partnership with the University of South Carolina. The testing events are scheduled to occur bimonthly in McBryde Hall from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on select dates through Dec. 2021. In order to participate, campus community members must pre-register and bring their Winthrop ID to the testing site. According to Winthrop’s Saliva Assay Free Expedited (SAFE) Testing page, campus community members are instructed not to eat, drink or smoke anything before the test. Additionally, they cannot have symptoms of COVID-19 prior to receiving the test.
If a student tests positive after receiving SAFE testing, Health Services will be notified of the positive test. Faculty and staff positive tests will not be reported automatically to Health Services. Winthrop encourages students to test at least once a month in order to mitigate asymptomatic spread on campus and is working on methods to report student positive cases on their COVID-19 dashboard.
The SAFE test was developed by researchers at USC’s College of Pharmacy. Through federal funding, USC was able to provide the saliva-based test to their students and faculty beginning in August 2020. USC requires students living on campus
or participating in campus activities to test once a month and offers testing on most weekdays. Unlike USC, Winthrop will not require students, faculty or staff to take the test on a monthly basis. Other public universities in South Carolina have also had saliva-based testing initiatives in place for several months.
Prior to the SAFE testing announcement, Winthrop had relied on campus community members to voluntarily report positive tests to campus Health Services and had recommended students receive tests at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control testing event at the Coliseum.
Winthrop’s Health Services also offers a COVID-19 test for students who meet certain conditions. The test offered at the DHEC event and Health Services is the nasopharyngeal swab test, which requires one to three days before the results are returned. SAFE testing uses a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that is 97.5% accurate in the early stages of infection, and the results can be returned within 24 to 48 hours of sample collection. PCR testing is considered the medical standard for COVID-19 tests.
During the first week of SAFE testing, there were 49 samples collected, and none of these samples came back positive. Since Winthrop began displaying the number of positive cases on their COVID-19 dashboard, there have been 136 cumulative positive tests. If an asymptomatic student living on campus tests positive, they are required to quarantine for ten days following the date of their positive test.
This announcement comes almost a year after the first initial positive COVID-19 test in the state. In the announcement email, President George Hynd mentions that many campus community members have requested a method of detecting asymptomatic spread on campus since last summer.
At the June 2020 Winthrop Board of Trustees meeting, Faculty Conference Chair Dr. Adolphus Belk, Jr. expressed to the Board that many faculty and staff wanted to know if testing would be available to students and if there was a plan to make it mandatory. In order to alleviate these concerns, Winthrop required all students attending courses or living on campus to upload negative test results before arriving at Winthrop for the Spring 2021 semester. Winthrop hopes this new SAFE testing
initiative will increase their testing capacity and help them isolate spread on campus.
Photo by Tate Walden
