On short notice, the School of Medicine put out a call for volunteers — with the hope of recruiting 2,000 people. The campus community responded, and we were able to analyze saliva samples from 2,314 employee and student volunteer participants.
Through this study, researchers assessed our ability to test a large number of people for COVID-19 and quickly return results. The study also allowed researchers to highlight and address any issues before launching widespread testing initiatives. The study was led by Jane O’Halloran, MD, PhD, of the Infectious Disease Clinical Research Unit, and Stacey House, MD, PhD, of the Emergency Care Research Core.
Our campus community rose to the challenge, providing researchers with needed information to perfect our testing and distribution processes so that we can deliver fast and easy COVID testing on a mass scale. We thank all of you!