Increased Surveillance Testing Opportunities

Shenandoah has been conducting surveillance testing for COVID-19 since the start of the academic year, beginning with the testing of residential and commuter undergraduate students and continuing last month with select undergraduate populations. Because of the good work of our pharmacy faculty, we are pleased to announce that we will expand this COVID-19 surveillance testing program for asymptomatic individuals by conducting even more tests on a weekly basis using pooled saliva samples. Our immediate priority is undergraduate students, but we will expand to include graduate students and faculty/staff.

To date, more than 2,000 surveillance tests have been administered by the university and are credited with identifying asymptomatic individuals infected with COVID-19. This has helped to quickly isolate infected individuals from other members of the university community and prevent further spread of the disease. So far this testing strategy has worked well for Shenandoah. We are reporting all positive cases weekly on the COVID-19 Dashboard on the university’s website. Now, surveillance test results are located there as well.

Surveillance testing allows for the identification of presumptive positive cases that are then referred for further diagnostic testing. Details about participating in Shenandoah’s surveillance testing program will be available soon.

We are excited to expand our testing capacity within our Shenandoah community, but please remember if we want to keep our campus healthy, we must continue to wash our hands, maintain social distance, and wear a mask.