Nonprofit leads way on COVID tests

While the development of an accurate, rapid and relatively affordable COVID-19 test is a remarkable achievement, it’s the community impact and benefit of any innovation that is the truest measure of its success.

In the case of Community Labs, the nonprofit cofounded by Graham Weston, J. Bruce Bugg Jr. and J. Tullos Wells, that measure is off the charts in a very short time. It’s impossible to overstate the significance of Community Labs’ innovative work for San Antonio and Texas.

Perhaps at the most basic level, Community Labs’ work to develop and distribute rapid COVID-19 testing has the potential to limit community spread of the disease from so-called silent spreaders, asymptomatic carriers of this insidious virus. It also has allowed faculty and staff at schools to feel more comfortable about returning to the classroom and for parents to feel more at ease about having their students attend school in person. These are not antigen tests but far more accurate PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, tests.

As Saul Hinojosa, superintendent of Somerset ISD, which hosted the first pilot of Community Labs’ tests last semester, recently told this Editorial Board, the testing has helped boost district inperson enrollment.

It was a point seconded by Edgewood ISD Superintendent Eduardo Hernández, and it’s one reason testing will be expanded to all San Antonio ISD campuses this spring.

“Having this as part of our safety procedures is a game-changer,” SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez told us.

What that means is parents, faculty and staff can embrace in-person learning with more confidence that schools are safe during this pandemic and learning can occur more equitably. This aligns with President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 plan, which includes funding for expanded testing to keep kids in schools.

One of the paradoxes of the pandemic has been that while students in wealthier school districts — where internet connections are mostly a given — have returned to in-person learning in greater numbers, students in lower-income districts, where internet connections are not assured, have often stayed home, potentially falling behind, with longterm consequences.

“Many of our families that are high income, they are in schools,” Martinez said. “They are in schools and their kids are in person. Why? Because they know that the schools are safe.”

But that can’t always be said about homes. As Hernández told us: “The other thing this pandemic has done is that it has actually shown our teachers what our kids are dealing with every day.”

He said teachers hear profanity, yelling and screaming in homes during virtual learning sessions, and now they “can’t unhear” and “can’t unsee” what they have witnessed.

At a time when the nation is struggling with vaccine distribution, new COVID-19 variants are emerging and it will be many months until a vaccine is available to children, expanded testing is crucial to have as many students in school as possible. Community Labs is a model.

We want to be clear. Testing in schools is not a solution to the digital divide in our community. When schools closed in the spring — a necessary, given how little we knew about the novel coronavirus, and the shortage in personal protective equipment — laptops were distributed to families who lacked internet connections. Students struggled to keep pace with online learning. Teachers struggled to connect with students.

Those challenges remain for many families. The solution is to ensure all households in San Antonio have access to reliable high-speed internet. What Community Labs’ testing offers isn’t a bridge to this divide, but an assurance that children and parents in San Antonio — hopefully all — can resume with inperson learning with a high degree of confidence regardless of income or geography.

Our call to Bugg, Weston and Wells is to please keep going. To not only expand testing, but pursue collaborations long after the pandemic to address our digital and learning divides. To view this remarkable achievement for testing as a beginning to even greater collaborative work and innovation.

Staff file photo Students at Barrera Veterans Elementary School await rapid COVID testing in October. This testing is crucial for having more kids in school.