City will have dedicated site for testing kids

Woonsocket, Lincoln will have COVID test centers for students

PROVIDENCE – Woonsocket, Pawtucket, Lincoln and East Providence will be among a dozen communities statewide that will host special swabbing centers for students in kindergarten through grade 12 as part of a separate COVID-19 testing system for students and staff in public and private schools, Gov. Gina M. Raimondo announced Tuesday.

“To ensure rapid and effective testing for our school communities, we are creating a separate dedicated testing structure for students and staff at public and private schools,” Raimondo said. “Through this system, which we’re setting up above and beyond our existing testing system, we will have the daily capacity to run 4,000 PCR tests with results being delivered in 48 hours, and 1,200 rapid tests with results within the day.”

The new school testing structure was unveiled the day after Raimondo announced that every school district in Rhode Island, with the exception of Providence and Central Falls, has been cleared

for full in-person learning starting Sept. 14. The governor says school districts will be allowed to ease into full in-person learning with the expectation that all students will be in school by Tuesday, Oct. 13. Providence and Central Falls, which did not meet the state’s reopening metrics, can have a limited number of students back in school buildings.

During a school-related press briefing yesterday, Raimondo explained how the new separate K-12 school

testing structure will work once schools reopen. If a student or staff member wakes up one morning and feels sick, she said, they will not be able to go to school that day and will be required to schedule a COVID-19 test by calling a dedicated K-12 testing hotline and setting up an appointment at one of 12 special K-12 swabbing centers.

“We are setting up a dozen or more special swabbing sites all over the state just for schools,” Raimondo said.

As of today the state has a dozen sites already identified in Providence, Lincoln, Cranston, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, West Warwick, East Providence, Westerly, North Kingstown, Richmond, Newport and Smithfield. Even

more will be up and running by Sept. 14.

Raimondo said when the student or staff member gets to the testing site, they will receive both polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and rapid test COVID-19 tests.

“This dual testing approach will give us the best of both worlds,” she said.

While waiting for their results, the student or staff member will be required to stay home until the test results are known, which will be a minimum of two days. If the test is negative, they can return to school as long as they are fever free for 24 hours. If the test is positive, they must follow CDC guidelines before going back to school.

If a student or staff member

becomes sick during the day while at school they will be required to go immediately to the school’s dedicated isolation room, which every single school in the state must have in order to reopen.

The student or staff member will then wait in isolation until they are picked up and brought home. Once they get home, they can call the hotline and schedule a test.

“We’re also going to be prepared to test certain asymptomatic populations through the K-12 hotline, particularly teachers and students who have been identified as close-contacts to a positive case,” Raimondo said. “If you’re a close contact to someone we know has COVID, you will be required

to do distance learning and we’re going to need you to get tested.”

Raimondo said testing is a key piece of the puzzle to keeping all Rhode Islanders safe during the pandemic.

“We’ve run more tests per capita than any other state in the country and we are continuing to run substantially more tests than our neighbors,” she said. “We test about twice as much as Massachusetts and 50 percent more than Connecticut. So far, we’ve run just about 530,000 tests, which is the equivalent of more than half our population.”

Said Raimondo: “At this point in time today, our average turnaround time for test results is about two days. There’s no question that our

aggressive and strategic approach to testing has been a key piece of what’s enabled us to be successful in keeping a lid on the virus. It’s also one of the main reasons that we feel so confident that we’re ready to reopen schools and welcome our children back.”

Raimondo said she is planning to discuss the new K-12 testing system in more detail today. In addition to her weekly coronavirus press briefings on Monday, Raimondo said beginning yesterday she will hold shorter daily press conferences Tuesday through Friday devoted exclusively to schools.