Mitigation Testing: The Journey of the Test Tube
Covid-19 can be scary, but mitigation testing doesn’t have to be. Monmouth College has partnered with Shield Illinois, a University of Illinois program, to offer testing to the Monmouth community.
Monmouth College received funding to buy 5,000 tests for Spring semester after applying for a grant from the Community-Health Foundation of Warren and Henderson Counties. The testing is available for students, faculty, and staff on campus and residents of Warren and Henderson counties. According to Dean Ogorzalek, the school processes between 80 and 100 tests per day of testing with results being received as early as nine hours after the sample is taken.
Scheduling a test is simple; sign into the MyChart application and select Monmouth College as the testing facility. Testing on campus is available Tuesdays and Fridays from 8 am and 1 pm. Testing takes place in the HT Science Building and the entrance is on the East side by Hewes Library.
The hardest part of getting tested is fasting for an hour beforehand. No food or fluid can be consumed before getting the test because the test is saliva based. The lack of water makes it slightly difficult to fill the test tube, but the student volunteers are prepared to help with tips such as thinking of a favorite food.
Once registered and fasted, it’s time to sign in. A student volunteer will greet you and ask you to confirm your name and birthday. Then you are handed a test tube and its time to begin. There are seats and tables spaced out where you can take your mask off and take the test. After the test tube is filled, you are handed a cap and place the tube in a bin. Getting tested took me less than 10 minutes in total and I got to listen to 2010’s throwbacks that the volunteers were playing.
After the test tube is placed in the bin, it begins its journey to HSHS St Mary’s Hospital in Decatur, Illinois. The two student volunteers who drove the bin with my test tube were Troy Hippen and Savannah Franklund.
The test tube went in through the back of the hospital, traveled through a maze of hallways, and delivered to the lab technicians. The salvia is tested using reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction according to the University of Illinois website. The Shield is 99.8-99.9% accurate, and only tests for live virus.
As people are able to get vaccinated and testing becomes more widely available, it is expected that the number of positive cases will decrease. Currently, the college does not have any students in active quarantine or active isolation and has one staff member in active quarantine and one in active isolation. However, low numbers do not mean that students can stop practicing safety measures such as social distancing and mask wearing.
“We just want to thank everyone for just being safe and wearing you masks because our numbers are so low, it’s kind of unbelievable. We are really excited about that. Thank you for doing your part to make our campus safe” said Dean Merritt.
Erin Henkel - News and Politics Editor