Centralia High School has been selected as one of 40 school districts around the state to pilot a rapid point of care testing program.
Superintendent Chuck Lane says once up and running the program will allow trained staff to take a nasal swab from any student who displays a symptom of COVID-19 and have a result back within 15 minutes.
“Kid comes in, obviously he’s really sick, even if he’s negative you are not going to use this stuff to send him to school even if he’s negative. If he’s got high fever and had thrown up, even if we test and he’s negative we aren’t going to let him come to school anyway, he would have gone home anyway. So those kinds of students that would have gone home regardless, a negative test is not going to keep them in school. The thing it will do is, the kids that show up that have a few symptoms but don’t feel that bad, a lot of times those kids are going home, but if they get a negative test, then they wouldn’t have to automatically.”
Lane says a positive test will result in classrooms where the student has been located to be immediately cleaned to try and avoid any further issues.
He says the test cannot be used to allow students or staff to test out of being a close contact which has been another area that has resulted in a large number of absences. Lane says the district will also look at daily testing for the staff and potentially those involved in athletics.
“So far they said getting a number of tests would not be a problem. There are no costs to those tests. What we are responsible for are individuals to administer the tests, the equipment that you would have to have, the protective gear, responsible to have someone come in and disinfect everything. All things we already have.”
Lane says the only cost would be a $200 start up cost. He notes the system could potentially be used to test for other illnesses as well.
Lane says there will be a lot of record keeping and the school nurse will need an assistant to help in the process. He reports any staff member can be trained fairly quickly to administer the test.
No date has been announced for the start of the program.
