UTK’s Student Testing Experiment: What Is There to Prove During a Pandemic?

From the beginning of the semester, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has seen daily COVID-19 cases far greater than the Harvard Global Health Institute's threshold for the "tipping point for uncontrolled community spread." While other colleges and universities anticipated such situations and developed concrete, preemptive plans for widespread testing, contact tracing, and supported isolation/quarantine spaces, UTK had no plans. Instead, the administration has relied on a delayed, inadequate approach to testing that has allowed the outbreak to spread uncontrolled.

Rather than implementing widespread testing, contact tracing, and supported isolation/quarantine spaces, University administrators resorted to shaming and chastising students who were exhibiting high-risk behavior. Chancellor Donde Plowman went as far as making clear that expulsion would be on the table for students who put others in danger of contracting COVID-19 by "acting irresponsibly."

Chancellor Plowman's response quickly gained national media attention. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, she stated, "We can do this, but students have to step up and do their part."

Now, nearly a month after school started, Dr. Spencer Gregg, Student Health Center Director, is placing blame on students regarding another issue—testing. During a Chancellor's update, Dr. Gregg said, "When we look at our overall numbers, there's two ways you could choose to look at the data. You can look at it from an optimistic standpoint; you can say, wow these numbers look great, our total number of active cases are coming down, our recoveries are going up, this is exactly what we want to see. Or you can look at it from another standpoint, which is probably more likely. That is, intentionally, fewer people are choosing to be tested. And with fewer people being tested, we're unable to identify those who are infected and others who are their close contacts."^[1]

In May of this year, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee said, "All roads back to school, back to college, back to work, lead through testing," Alexander went on to say, "Fortunately, it looks like we're going to have a lot of tests in August and September."^[2]

Just this summer, Albrecht von Arnim, Associate Head of UT's Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology, said, "Since the early days of the pandemic, many working groups and task forces all over the country have stressed the importance of testing portions of the population on a regular basis."^[3]

The University of Tennessee has failed those expectations. Between 9 August and 24 September, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has conducted only 1,179 COVID-19 tests on students, with a current 7-day average of only 6 daily new student tests. Through that same time period, The University of Kentucky has conducted over 30,000, and the University of Illinois has conducted over 370,000. Meanwhile, Dr. Gregg had stated on 21 August that the testing capacity for the student health center was at 2,000 tests per day. ^[4]

Now, nearly a month after school students arrived on campus, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has just started rolling out a COVID-19 testing strategy for students. It is important to note that a research team from the University leads this strategy, with hopes that other institutions could potentially adopt it. This process involves monitoring the wastewater of most campus buildings and all residence halls for the presence of COVID-19 and following up with pooled saliva testing. However, the University had already acknowledged in July that starting this strategy later in the semester would be far too late. "Initially, the company representative told the team their order might not be available until October, which was far too late to implement the saliva testing program."^[3]

According to Terry Hazen, the research team leader charged with this process, "This type of monitoring does not have the ability to identify an individual person."^[5] Therefore, if the team finds the virus in samples, it will trigger a response to take a saliva sample from everyone in the building, floor by floor. However, the saliva samples are entirely anonymous and do not give the University the ability to identify select students who need to self-isolate. Instead, they must direct students in positive pools to nasal-swab PCR testing through the Student Health Center. These students are not required to self-isolate at any time during this process until they are nasal swabbed. Instead of creating an effective surveillance program, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has created a funnel that slows down contact tracing efforts to suppress the viral outbreak on campus.

In contrast, the testing strategy is vastly different for student-athletes who are competing in fall sports. Lady Vol soccer coach Brian Penske recently said on the Tony Basilio Show that his athletes would be tested three times per week during the season.^[6] The University will be utilizing the SEC designated provider, Pacific Architects and Engineers, as a 3rd party designee to provide COVID-19 testing services for student-athletes during in-season fall sports.^[7] Student-Athletes are not limiting the testing capacity for the Student Health Center.

The administration's delayed and inadequate testing strategy on the general student body versus the student-athletes begs the broader question of why the University is taking a different approach to the general student body than the widespread approach they are taking on student-athletes. Thus far, the minimal planning and reactionary approach have proven grossly inadequate. The need for transparency, concrete strategy, and practical action cannot be understated. Did the University’s Institutional Review Board approve of this experiment of the general student body?