Filling the Gaps in Santa Clara’s COVID Testing Strategy

In the absence of a mandate, off-campus students ought to voluntarily increase testing habits

For the first four weeks of the academic year, Santa Clara has seen low COVID-19 case rates through tests taken with its on-campus testing program. According to Santa Clara’s COVID-19 dashboard, out of 20,195 tests administered, only 14 have come back positive — a positivity rate of .07%.

This low level of transmission is thanks to the fact that 99% of undergraduate students, 98% of graduate students, and 98% of faculty and staff have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Compared to spring quarter of last year, we are in an entirely different situation.

However, Santa Clara’s apparent triumph over the virus may hang in a delicate balance.

Despite what off-campus behavior might suggest, the pandemic is not over. Sadly, the vaccine is not a license to return to normal and live with reckless abandon. The Delta variant disrupted our plans for a regular school year. Until cases subside even further, more COVID-19 mitigation steps are necessary to keep the Santa Clara community safe. We must adapt.

The first step to keep Santa Clara safe during this liminal period of the pandemic has already been taken — getting vaccinated. And thanks to our university’s strict vaccine mandate, compliance is near universal. Masking is also a key mitigation strategy. Mandated by Santa Clara County indoors, masks (when worn properly) reduce transmission dramatically, especially when combined with vaccinations.

Both vaccinations and masking have kept transmission on-campus low, but potential outbreaks still need to be surveilled through a comprehensive COVID-19 testing program.

As current Santa Clara policy stands, only resident students are required to get tested weekly.

This is a tragic oversight.

Most COVID-19-risky behavior takes place at off-campus locations, hosted by off-campus students, just outside the reach of university control. If outbreaks happen at parties, or other off-campus gatherings, cases could go undetected, and we would not know the true status of COVID-19 transmission in our community. This uncertainty puts students, staff, and faculty who must be on-campus in harm’s way.

As ASG’s Senator-At-Large for COVID Transition, I have had the opportunity to have conversations with both a member of Santa Clara’s COVID-19 Advisory Board and a university administrator about requiring off-campus students to test weekly.

In each of my meetings, the message was broadly the same. Everyone I talked to believes mandating testing for off-campus students is impractical and infeasible given Santa Clara’s current human capital. An additional problem is that there are no effective ways to sanction off-campus students who would fail to meet a weekly testing requirement. It is a logistical hurdle that the university is unwilling to get over.

This is a disappointing reality. Not testing off-campus students creates a massive blind spot in the university’s testing program and will create exposures and close contacts to the virus which could have been prevented entirely if a requirement was put in place.

Since Santa Clara cannot and will not mandate COVID-19 testing for off-campus students, a new strategy through grassroots support is needed.

As the numbers stand, approximately 2,400 students currently live on campus, each mandated to test at least once per week. Only 3,367 tests were reported (a number inclusive of faculty, staff and people being tested multiple times) on October 9th suggesting a severe dropoff in off-campus student participation in the testing program after the mandatory, but largely unenforced, entry testing.

Students, professors, university staff and administrators and Greek life leaders all need to band together to encourage each other to get tested for the virus regularly. We are only able to maintain a semblance of normalcy if we can track the status of COVID-19 cases and prevent them from spreading the virus to others.

With Color, testing has never been easier. It rarely takes more than 2 minutes to activate your kit and swab your nose, and there are a handful of convenient locations to pick up and drop off your tests as well. There is no excuse to skip getting tested.

Do the right thing. Take a test.