OSU testing more people than some states
University processed about 300,000 last week
Ohio State is testing more people for COVID-19 each week than some U.S. states.
The university tested 30,000 people for coronavirus last week, according to a news release Wednesday. That's more than 10 states — Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Montana, Idaho, Missouri, Arkansas and Maine — as well as Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to data from the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
Ohio State's testing numbers made up about 12% of the total number of tests conducted in Ohio during that same time. The state administered 244,628 tests last week.
On Monday, the university processed its 200,000th test since it started processing tests on campus on Oct. 26 last year.
“You have people from across all our campuses, all our departments, pulled out of all sorts of jobs to accomplish this one specific goal: getting as many students tested as we could,” said Christy Bertolo in the release. Bertolo is a member of Ohio State's COVID-19 implementation team and has managed oncampus testing at Jesse Owens North.
Ohio State ramped up its testing capacity throughout last year as part of its plan to bring students back to campus.
At first, the university tested only a small sample of students who lived on campus, about 300 per day. But as positivity rates spiked over the summer, testing expanded to get a more accurate picture of the virus' spread. Positivity rates of the campus population spiked as high as 5% during that time.
COVID-19 tests became mandatory for students living in dorms. Testing later increased to include students living off-campus and frontline employees. In early February, the university expanded testing again to some faculty teaching hybrid classes, which added another 3,000 to 4,000 people who could be tested, said Jessica Buskirk, managing director of Ohio State's Human Performance Collaborative. who works closely with the university's oncampus COVID-19 test processing.
Nationwide, 324,226,934 COVID-19 tests were administered last week, according to the CDC. Of those tests, 29,287,282 were confirmed positive, about a 9% positivity rate. The number of COVID-19 tests administered nationwide has been decreasing over the last month, as positive cases also drop.
In October, the university began sending its tests to its Applied Microbiology Services Lab. By sending tests to an on-campus facility to be processed, results could be returned within a day rather than waiting three days. The AM now processes about 85% of Ohio State's COVID-19 tests.
COVID-19 positivity rates on campus are now below 0.5%, said Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson in her State of the University address last week.
The testing successes at Ohio State have prompted other organizations to reach out for advice, said Seth Faith, strategic alliance officer at Ohio State's Infectious Diseases Institute, co-director of the Center of Microbiome Science and technical supervisor of the AMSL.
“I've been contacted by no less than 50 organizations, most of those universities of different sizes,” he said. “And we've been able to help many of them improve their own programs.” shendrix@dispatch.com @sheridan120