College campus entry program GuideSafe includes COVID-19 testing, monitoring
A new program called GuideSafe is aimed at helping Alabama’s college students return to campus safely.
Beginning Tuesday, thirteen COVID-19 testing sites across the state will begin the testing 200,000 college students over the next four weeks. The sites will have the ability to test a combined ten to twelve thousand college students per day.
“It is the largest scale higher education testing initiative in the nation,” said UAB President, Dr. Ray Watts.
The UAB Department of Pathology will process all tests. Results are expected within 48 hours.
The tests are required of all of Alabama’s public or private four year college students and two year college students who live on campus.
The $30 million dollar GuideSafe program is funded with federal money from the CARES Act.
Another part of the new GuideSafe program is an app UAB created in partnership with Apple and Google. It uses bluetooth technology to alert you if you've been in contact with someone who's tested positive within 14 days.
“All the app knows is the date of the exposure, how long the exposure lasted and the bluetooth signal strength between the phones. No other personal information,” explained Dr. Sue Feldman, associate professor of health informatics at UAB.
Participation in the exposure notification app is not required, but it is highly encouraged. A pilot program launched Monday for students and faculty with an .edu email address.
Dr. Selwyn Vickers, dean of the UAB School of Medicine said the exposure notification app is an important tool to help decrease the risk on campus.
“We understand we can’t remove all risk,” he said of students returning to campus. “But what we want to do is mitigate risk in a major way.”
With Alabama’s rising number of cases and increasing demand for testing, plans are being made to expand the program to help all of Alabama’s citizens.
That includes the 13 test sites.
“What we’re doing right now is we’re evaluating how to pivot in the next 2-3 weeks, much sooner than we originally planned, so we can provide this service to the state which is looking for more help in terms of capacity,” said UAB’s Dr. Michael Saag.
“Whether it’s using the 13 sites where they are, or moving them or redesigning them, we plan to use that platform, along with the expanded testing capacity at our department of pathology, which turnaround time is 24-48 hours at best for our citizens,” added Dr. Vickers.
Vickers says there’s also a plan to roll out the exposure notification app to all of Alabama’s citizens, which he says will be useful in combination with the health department’s contact tracing.
“When they call to ask someone about contact tracing, there is a high chance, up to 50% of the time, people don’t know who they’ve been in contact with. This app, which will be available later this month for everybody, has the ability to do that with an automated way once you’ve been tested positive to let everyone know who has been exposed.”
The GuideSafe initiative also a health check app for students to log their symptoms, and a passport app, which facilitates opt in access to facilities, meetings or events with ten or more participants.
