MTU One of Just a Few US Universities With Highly Robust COVID-19 Testing Plans
Return-to-campus plans vary widely by school as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the US. Researchers say Michigan Tech has one of the most robust plans in the nation.
Thousands of college students are returning to campuses across the country. But, just days after welcoming students back, or even prior to doing so, a number of universities have already transitioned back to remote instruction following clustered outbreaks of COVID-19.
In this context, researchers at
According to the Cal Tech database of university testing plans made available,
"We have a comprehensive plan and we're trying to cover all the bases, but nothing is 100% assured. We are prepared for eventualities," said
"A lot of schools are doing testing initially and then only symptomatic testing after that, which won't allow them to see how it changes prevalence in the population day to day and week to week, which we will be seeing."
A Multifaceted Plan
Michigan Tech began operating its COVID-19 testing lab in April. The lab can process approximately 150 individual samples per day, or 500 pooled samples per day, with 98% of results coming back in 36 hours. Students began returning to campus
During baseline and surveillance testing, Michigan Tech student samples will be pooled in groups of five. The University's COVID-19 lab will take a portion from each of the five student samples, combine them to create a pool, and run one diagnostic test on the pool. If the pool tests positive, the five samples will be tested again individually.
"We know that if we get 15 cases, for example, they've been out in the community and we know there will be an increase in cases -- a second generation of cases. If we can quarantine those contacts, we'll stop the spread at that point," said
Working with its health insurance provider, Michigan Tech is also providing two free-of-charge asymptomatic tests to all University employees during the fall semester.
"We don't have a university health system. We are at a major disadvantage to doing baseline and surveillance testing, and yet we have figured it out by working with our local community health providers," Kamm said. "It says a lot that when it came through many insurance companies wouldn't pay for asymptomatic testing, our administration said we're still going to do testing and not charge the students."
"Our contact tracers will also be paid, even as the state of
Disrupt, Concentrate, Extract, Quantify
Wastewater monitoring on campus is a crucial component of Michigan Tech's return-to-campus plan -- people begin shedding the virus in feces before they become symptomatic.
Studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater predict the number of symptomatic individuals infected with COVID-19. Weekly monitoring of wastewater flows on campus should reveal trends in the number of infections on campus, even if infected individuals are asymptomatic. If SARS-CoV-2 levels increase in the wastewater stream generated by a particular residential building, University officials can intensify focus on that particular location to increase diagnostic testing of the asymptomatic residents of that building to limit the spread of the virus among their contacts.
The process Becker uses to quantify the virus in wastewater has four main steps: disrupt the virus structure using chemical methods (including adding large amounts of sodium chloride to the sample), concentrate the viral genetic material (ribonucleic acid, or RNA), extract the virus RNA from the wastewater, and then quantify the amount of the viral RNA in the samples using a technology known as reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR).
In RT-qPCR, the viral RNA in a sample is converted to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is tagged with a fluorescent dye. The fluorescent DNA is then copied in repetitive cycles until the fluorescence can be reliably detected in the qPCR instrument. The number of cycles required to generate a measurable signal can be used to estimate the abundance of the viral RNA in wastewater samples by repeating this process with solutions containing known concentrations of the viral RNA. This process of quantifying the amount of viral RNA goes a step further than diagnostic sampling of human biospecimens, which is designed to determine only whether a sample is positive or negative for the virus.
"It's very challenging methodologically. Environmental samples are complex and variable," Becker said, noting that despite its challenges and cost, wastewater sampling acts as an early warning system.
"We get a signal before people become symptomatic. Several studies at
Early and Often
Michigan Tech is prepared to pivot to remote instruction if necessary, but hopes that the face-to-face instruction students have said they want remains possible through the efforts of many people working together to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
"Early detection is key so we can do a midcourse correction," Reed said. "The baseline testing we'll be doing in the next week or so gives us our starting point. Surveillance testing lets us monitor prevalence in the population as well as work with individual people on contact tracing to catch clusters before they become clusters. Wastewater sampling gives us the ability to adjust our surveillance sampling to what may be emerging hotspots on campus so we catch them early."
"The whole idea is to catch cases early and take action, whether isolation or quarantine, whatever the situation demands, so we don't have spread occurring while waiting on test results," he continued. "We have located isolation space and have the ability to flex that space to increase it if we get in a situation where we need to. Hopefully by catching things early, we'll have a minimum number of people who need to go into isolation. The goal is to get to final exams."
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