November 12, 2020
Since August, University Medical Center has conducted COVID-19 testing for The University of Alabama campus. We haven’t stopped, and when the fall semester becomes the spring semester, we’ll still be testing.
UMC is operated by the College of Community Health Science, which educates medical students and resident physicians, so we are well positioned to lead this important testing effort. Keeping the UA campus healthy also aligns with our mission of improving the health of communities.
We have provided and continue to provide COVID-19 exposure and symptomatic testing for students and UA employees, geographic testing on campus, and testing for new employees and those employees returning to campus after months of working remotely. By early October, we had tested more than 8,000 students and more than 5,300 faculty and staff. We also tested more than 650 people working on contract with UA.
The primary goal of our efforts and that of the University is to protect students, faculty and staff and to keep campus and the Tuscaloosa community safe.
Having students, particularly undergraduate students, on campus is also vital for the University to continue at full operations, and that is important for the local community, whose economy is annually infused with several billion dollars courtesy of UA.
CCHS and UMC employees understood that and put the work of keeping the UA campus safe and healthy squarely on their shoulders. We were in uncharted territory, but we worked extremely hard, learned every day, and created a playbook to guide us, one built on long, long hours and lots of hard work.
The results have been good. Positive COVID-19 rates on campus are extremely low and there has no classroom transmission of the virus. Undergraduate enrollment dipped only 3% for the fall semester. Getting students back to campus for the fall semester, and keeping them here, was huge.
Getting students back for the spring semester will be just as critical.
To that end, UMC will continue to provide COVID-19 exposure and symptomatic testing for students and UA employees. We are adding the option of exit testing for students who want it before leaving campus and heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday and winter break.
We will continue sentinel testing, which is regular testing of approximately 4% of faculty, staff and student across campus. This will help us keep informed about COVID-19 infection rates on campus and identify potential virus hotspots. And we will soon gear up for re-entry testing and continued COVID-19 testing for the spring semester.
We have accomplished so much, and I am incredibly proud of our College’s faculty and staff. There is more work to do, and we will be here to see that through.
The College of Community Health Sciences operates University Medical Center
