NEWPORT — Oregon State University is adjusting its weekly COVID-19 prevalence testing of students and employees at the Hatfield Marine Science Center before and after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Any OSU student living in the Newport area is invited to be tested beginning Monday, Nov. 16, through Thursday, Nov. 19, and do not need to be enrolled in ongoing coronavirus trace studies to participate. Testing results are expected to be available to students within 72 hours and by Tuesday, Nov. 24, at the latest.
“The expanded testing occurs at an important time as people travel and gather for the holidays, and as cases of COVID-19 are spiking in Oregon and across the nation,” said Steve Clark, vice president for university relations and marketing at OSU.
OSU’s “TRACE” program launched Sept. 28 on its Newport, Corvallis and Bend campuses and includes weekly random prevalence testing of approximately 1,000 students and staff. Each week during fall term, TRACE OSU has invited a representative group of students, faculty and staff, selected at random from the registration pool, to be tested. There are two testing locations at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.
As OSU focuses on testing students next week, no routine prevalence testing will be conducted for faculty and staff.
For the week of Nov. 30, all university faculty and staff on the three campuses who are enrolled in the program are invited to resume testing. Regular prevalence testing of selected enrollees will resume the week of Dec. 7, with no testing taking place the rest of December.
