Troy schools join forces in battling virus

RPI to preside over testing for Emma Willard School

In a bid to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in Troy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will now preside over weekly testing of students, faculty and staff at Emma Willard School, according to an announcement from RPI.

“This collaboration between the local schools streamlines the testing process and reduces the wait time for results for Emma Willard, and it demonstrates the capability of Rensselaer to help external partners fight the pandemic,” the new release states.

In the fall, Emma Willard School, with the help of a variety of partners, began weekly testing of day students and employees as a part of its COVID-19 mitigation measures. In January, as youngsters began returning to the all-female campus, the number of people being tested rose and the school began exploring ways to improve the process.

RPI had already been conducting widespread surveillance testing on campus since August in an effort to limit the spread of the virus.

Two months later, RPI announced it was teaming up with St. Peter’s Health Partners to establish a lab at the school under the St. Peter’s license, a designation that allows tests conducted by Rensselaer to be used as diagnostic tests for public health reporting.

Additionally, it paved the way for the university to offer testing to other institutions and organizations in the Capital Region.

Officials at Emma Willard reached out to RPI, and that led to the first full-scale surveillance testing program at Rensselaer. So now, students, faculty and staff at Emma Willard are tested once a week, with results returned within 24 hours of when they arrive at the Rensselaer lab.

“The partnership has been extremely positive,” said Emma Willard’s Director of Nursing Jennifer Bliss in the news release. “Our turnaround time for testing has been greatly reduced and having a local partner has alleviated the need for shipping samples to a testing facility.”

Curtis Powell, Rensselaer’s vice president for human resources, stated that the partnership with Emma Willard “will serve as a model for other surveillance testing programs we plan to launch, and we are very excited about the optimism it brings for our collective future.”