Nonprofit set to play larger COVID role
It will expand school tests, offer them in other cities
Community Labs is expanding its coronavirus testing efforts in local schools and across Texas amid a surge in the pandemic that is threatening to overwhelm the state’s health care systems.
The state has contracted with the San Antonio-based nonprofit to provide up to 10,000 tests per day for first responders, particularly firefighters, in Laredo and El Paso, two cities hit especially hard by the pandemic.
“We’re going to go wherever the state of Texas needs us to go,” J. Bruce Bugg, a cofounder and board member, told the San Antonio Express-news Editorial Board on Tuesday.
Community Labs has done some testing in Boerne and Kerrville, but its work in the two border cities will be its farthest venture outside Bexar County since its creation last summer.
“As we know, COVID changes, and we’re here to respond as the need presents itself,” added Sal Webber, president of Community Labs.
The startup still is figuring out the logis
tics, but expects to be operating in Laredo and El Paso in the next few weeks.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management chose Community Labs as a partner because its tests are cheaper, faster and just as effective as any alternative, said Graham Weston, its co-founder and chairman.
Officials didn’t give a dollar amount for the value of the state contract but said it would cover all the tests — which could amount to $350,000 per day at its standard $35 per test — and the cost of the expansion.
The purchase order can be renewed on a monthly basis.
“We are ramping up to serve the state of Texas, and however much and however and wherever they need us in the state of Texas is what we’re doing,” Bugg said.
The San Antonio Independent School District, the third-largest in Bexar County and one of several using Community Labs to regularly test asymptomatic students and staff, will expand testing to all of its campuses, Superintendent Pedro Martinez said.
Previously, SAISD only had been offering testing in some schools, and it wasn’t clear how long the partnership would last. Martinez said he “saw a sigh of relief ” when he made the announcement to families last week.
“Having this as part of our safety procedures is a game-changer,” he said. “Especially when we’re seeing a (Bexar County) positivity rate of 23 percent, that gives them a sense of assurance.”
Community Labs has been providing PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, tests to schools and businesses since early in the fall.
It also provides many of the tests used at community testing sites like the AT&T Center, accounting for nearly half of all the coronavirus tests administered in San Antonio.
The nonprofit is administering about 10,000 tests in San Antonio daily, but hopes to double that number in the next few weeks, said Richey Wyatt, a board member at Community Labs and general counsel at Biobridge Global, the nonprofit that operates the labs where the tests are analyzed.
“We’re pushing the envelope to get as much capacity as we can for our community,” Wyatt said.
Among local school districts, SAISD has taken one of the most conservative approaches to reopening classrooms, expecting to have less than one-third of its students back on campuses when classes restart next week.
Other superintendents have touted weekly testing as an effective way to monitor and control the presence of the virus on their campuses so as to encourage families to sign up their children for in-person instruction, which has proven more effective than re
mote learning for most students.
School leaders have pointed to low on-campus transmission and positivity rates as indicators that schools generally are safe for students and staff.
In December, as Bexar County’s positivity rate rose to 15 percent, SAISD’S hovered around 1 percent. In Somerset ISD in southwestern Bexar County, it was below 0.5 percent.
Somerset ISD piloted Community Labs’ tests in September, starting with just a couple hundred tests on a single campus. By November, the district was testing thousands of students and staff and in-person enrollment had increased by 20 percent.
By the end of the fall semester, Somerset was testing about 2,000 people every week, and nearly 70 percent of students were back on campuses.
“We feel that testing has brought confidence and assurance in our community and has allowed teachers to do what they do best, which is teach in the classroom,” Superintendent Saul Hinojosa said.
Edgewood ISD also is testing students and staff on every campus. Superintendent Eduardo Hernandez called the impact of the testing “immeasurable,” adding that it directly contributed to a rise in on-campus enrollment.
The district is expecting about 56 percent of its students to be on campuses when the semester starts.
Community Labs officials said they plan to announce partnerships with four more school districts in the coming weeks.
The tests are 99 percent effective, less invasive than many others and yield results in 15 hours or less, on average. Tests have been paid for by the city, Bexar County and school districts. Any tests taken outside of the county will be paid for by the state, Bugg said.
Community Labs’ founders hope they will be able to lower the price of tests to $15 each before the pandemic is over, citing promising technological innovations.
They expect to be providing testing services for the next 18 months or as long as they are needed, Weston said.
Making the test more affordable also could make it accessible to more people in the community, many of whom have waited in long lines to get tested as the pandemic has worsened.
The testing locations using Community Labs tests saw the number of people wanting to get tested increase tenfold in December alone.
The tests are able to detect the new variant of the coronavirus, which is more contagious than the strain that has been spreading since March, and has been detected in several states.
The nonprofit will work with UT Health San Antonio to determine whether the variant has arrived here.