Pro
Rick Chen ‘23
As schools across the country reevaluate their COVID-19 protocols for in-person learning, many consider implementing random testing. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stated during a panel with doctors from Harvard Medical School “we need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy.” As Fauci said, keeping the EA community safe is not an easy task. With outdoor activities, social distancing, and contact tracing become increasingly difficult, random testing becomes a more logical measure. The integration of random testing will not only help EA by preventing the rapid spread of cases, but it would also increase awareness about the virus among the student population. Random testing will increase the safety and security for all those within the EA community.
Random testing has been used by many local schools including Germantown Academy and Shipley as a helpful guide and measurement of their effective handling of COVID-19, yet EA has opted for students and faculty to utilize self-screenings based on symptoms. The current health screenings and protocols enforced at EA do not take into consideration those who are asymptomatic, which according to the CDC, comprise 40 – 45% of cases. EA’s current health screening system mainly screens for symptoms, possibly missing those who are infected but unaware. Thus, in order to truly measure the severity of COVID-19 cases at EA, we must enforce further changes such as random testing to ensure the safety of our community.
T.J. Locke, Head of School, understands the reasons some schools are conducting random testing stating, “One of the pros is that you’ll catch something before it spreads and you’ll have saved it from spreading.” Unlike the current temperature screenings in place, with random testing Episcopal’s health department has the ability to further their own knowledge on the condition of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections in the student body. Random testing will offer a larger sense of security because of the confidence in identifying those who are infected but currently not identified correctly with temperature screenings.
Local schools such as Germantown Academy and Shipley that have already used random testing in their current COVID-19 reopening plans have seen various improvements from their student body, parental reception, and general awareness of the virus. Helen Wu ‘21, a senior at Germantown Academy, talks about her perspective on random testing at GA and its effects on the student body, saying, “If you have random testing, then people are going to and want to stay safe.” Random testing would cause the EA community to be more mindful safety precautions, allowing for administrators to lean towards staying open. Locke acknowledges GA’s approach stating “The kids will behave better because they know they are going to get tested.”
Not only can random testing keep people safe, but it can also prevent a larger spread of the virus by prompting community members to be safer and smarter when choosing what and what not to do. As we move further and further into the holiday season, EA must consider random testing as a strong option for securing a safe environment in the community.
Con
Xinxin Fang ‘23
Although implementing random testing may be helpful at schools like Germantown Academy or Shipley, due to time, design of the test, and our own actions, random testing is not the right option for EA.
The main issue is the design of available tests. Currently, only antigen type testing is available and it wasn’t originally created to deal with asymptomatic cases. EA already provides testing for symptomatic cases, getting results from a lab in about one day. Antigen testing often leads to false positives and false negatives which can create unnecessary chaos and concern among families who are in contact with students. Laura Hurst, School Nurse, also says “when we get the test results back, we are unable to determine when the person was exposed to the disease; the carrier could’ve had the disease a week ago or two days ago.” EA’s contact tracing becomes difficult with random testing because of the unknown times of exposure and false positives, possibly forcing large groups of students to go virtual because of a fake positive case.
Even though other schools may be finding random testing to be helpful, T.J. Locke, Head of School, believes that “we are managing very well” and all the changes they have made at EA are enough for preventing the spread of the virus in case of asymptomatic people. Random testing is unnecessary as long as students are following EA’s established safety guidelines. The tests also become ineffective if the student body behaves irrationally outside of school. Locke explains, “Because there is no bubble here, kids are going to club sports or restaurants or not wearing masks. Those things are more of a problem than the actual testing.” If EA was a boarding school, Locke says, “we would do more testing [because] you weren’t leaving.” However, this is clearly not the case. The test results take a day to come back from the lab so if a student gets tested, they are still being exposed to the community while waiting for results.
Locke is also concerned about families’ reactions to mass testing. He says “there are people out there that don’t want the school to be more like a medical facility. I could see some people saying, ‘I want my doctor doing that and not the school.’” Testing requires the school to provide an explanation and find the money and means for large scale testing. Locke said that “I know we have a lot, but we don’t have our own lab” for testing.
However, Locke and Hurst are both in agreement in implementing PCR testing, a new type of testing that may soon be available to the public. Unlike antigen tests, PCR detects the presence of the virus’s genetic material and is highly accurate compared to antigen tests. The problem is that the test is currently not mass produced and is incredibly expensive, making it unscalable if EA plans to test a good amount of their students everyday. Once the price lowers and PCR tests are mass produced for the public, EA would still face the obstacles of formulating a viable testing plan and convincing families of the reasoning for testing.
Eventually PCR tests could help us keep our community safer, but current random testing measures would be ineffective and problematic. Above all, testing results are fruitless if the EA community does not abide by the guidelines already put in place. The safety of the entire EA community depends more on the actions and honesty of students and less on testing.