SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 • VOLUME 91 • ISSUE 4
The official student newspaper of Quinnipiac University since 1929
The most
CONSEQUENTIAL
CONNOR LAWLESS/CHRONICLE
election in US history p.6
NEWS P.3: Hogan Lot closure
Hogan Lot is shut down for the fall semester, upsetting some students.
PHOTO FROM FLICKR
OPINION P.4: America’s apathy
The injustice in Breonna Taylor’s case shows how law enforcement lacks accountability.
CHRONICLE ARCHIVES (2019)
SPORTS P.12: Lab rats The women’s club soccer team is preparing for a spring season despite restrictions. ILLUSTRATION BY CONNOR LAWLESS
Behind the scenes of Quinnipiac’s testing infrastructure By EMILY DISALVO Arts & Life Editor
As soon as the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on colleges and universities became clear this spring, a team of professors and medical experts at Quinnipiac University began to work on developing a testing model. These four experts used a complicated simulation, research from previous pandemics and their own individual expertise, to launch a several-pronged strategy to identify, track and ultimately prevent cases of COVID-19 on Quinnipiac’s campuses.
The team
The testing team, headed by Dr. David Hill, professor of medical sciences and director of Global Public Health at Quinnipiac, meets almost every day. The other representative from the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine is Dr. Richard Feinn, associate professor of medical sciences. In addition, James Soda, associate professor of mathematics and data science, helped create the mathematical simulation that eventually led to the development of
the testing strategy. Xi Chen, associate professor of sociology, is an expert in research methods. She developed the sampling strategy for testing students.
The test
If you were ever tested this spring or summer for a reason unrelated to Quinnipiac, you may have experienced a deep swab in your nose administered by a nurse or doctor. At Quinnipiac, students have been able to avoid this dreaded swab in favor of a saliva test before they came and a gentle, self-administered circling of the nostril upon theirour arrival. After the first round of testing, which was a saliva test administered through “Vault Health” testing via Rutgers University, Quinnipiac identified 20 positive cases of COVID-19. These students were not allowed to move into Quinnipiac until they acquired a negative test result. The test used on campus is called the anterior narase test. Test accuracy is ranked on specificity and sensitivity. “Sensitivity refers to people who are infected and specificity means it will not
pick up people who are not infected,” Hill said. Hill said that the evolving science around COVID-19 revealed that the virus can be identified not just in saliva and in the depths of the nasopharynx but also in the outside part of the nose. The tests that Quinnipiac uses to test students on campus come from the Broad Institute, which manufactures this type of test. “We didn’t have to administer the nasopharyngeal swab which is quite uncomfortable,” Hill said. “We could just stand and observe students do it.” While Hill was not sure of the exact accuracy of the test given the fact that students administer it themselves, he said the test did receive emergency use authority from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “The FDA emergency use authority means it hasn’t gone through the full process, but it has gone through all of the scientific analysis, which said it was fine,” Hill said. Hill said the majority of COVID-19 GRAPHIC BY KARA KACHMAR
See TESTING Page 3