ENOLA – Governor Wolf”s Administration is taking two big steps to keep kids in the classroom and COVID out.
During a news conference Monday, Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said she is directing vaccine providers to support vaccine clinics at institutions of higher education and K-12 schools,
“When requested to do so by a school, vaccine providers are expected to make every effort to coordinate a vaccine clinic for employees, contractors, volunteers, students and student’s families within a school.”
Sec. Beam says the clinics can be held at the school or a location agreed upon by the school and vaccine provider. If a provider is unable to coordinate a clinic, that provider is responsible for directing the school to the Department of Health to contact other vaccine providers.
Beam also announced a partnership with Concentric by Ginkgo Bioworks to provide free COVID testing in K-12 schools throughout this school year, “Ginkgo’s program starts with a foundation of pooled testing which combines nasal swave samples from a classroom or group and runs them as a single test to determine the presence of COVID-19. Across the country, this methodology has been used in schools as a simple and scalable way to easily test many people at once while minimizing resource strain.”
For participating schools, pooled testing will be done weekly, but among those in the participating schools who volunteer to be tested. Tests take about 10 minutes and turnaround time for results is 1-2 days.
Beam says both mid-nasal swab and saliva-based PCR tests will be performed, and says this has already been done in some schools nationwide, “Students, teachers, nurses, school administrators alike, have described the testing process as simple and painless. The program alerts schools quickly if COVID-19 is present in the classroom or the school environment.”
Beam says Ginkgo will provide training, test materials, as well as staffing, lab and data processing.
