Ohio State has tested more people for COVID-19 in the last seven days than seven states and
three U.S. territories, while also accounting for more than ten percent of the state of Ohio’s total tests issued. Credit: Courtesy of Michael Oglesbee
Ohio State has tested more people for COVID-19 in the past seven days than nine U.S. states and territories while also accounting for more than 10 percent of the state of Ohio’s total tests issued, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The university performed 22,471 tests from March 24-30 — more than Montana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Mississippi, Wyoming, South Dakota, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — thanks to testing strategy adaptations such as moving test processing to the Applied Microbiology Services Laboratory, Dr. William Miller, senior associate dean for research at the College of Public Health, said.
The majority of student COVID-19 tests are processed at the AMSL, and faculty and tests from the public are typically processed at the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State, Miller said. All tests are included in the COVID-19 dashboard to track testing and virus cases.
Most samples are collected via saliva and processed using PCR testing, which amplifies genetic information to detect COVID-19, Michael Oglesbee, director of Ohio State’s Infectious Disease Institute and professor in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences, said.
“The only way that we could help people stay on campus is by having robust testing,” Miller said. “The more people they have tested, the more likely they’ve stayed open.”
The AMSL is a partnership between the Infectious Disease Institute and the Department of Microbiology, Oglesbee said. The lab began processing COVID-19 tests in October 2020.
Miller said the university adjusted its testing strategy as the pandemic evolved, switching from Vault, a third-party testing provider, to the in-house AMSL.
“There were challenges with Vault in particular that the time to results was long, which limits how rapidly we can respond,” Miller said. “If you had an infection, you didn’t know you were infected until three days later, and so in that time, there’s potentially more spread from one person to another.”
On-campus test processing allows for quicker response times if cases substantially increase, Miller said.
At the time of publication, test result times averaged 13 hours over a seven-day period, according to the COVID-19 dashboard.
On March 8, the university began requiring on-campus residents to test twice weekly after cases doubled between Feb. 24 and March 2. Testing reverted back to once per week March 19 when cases decreased.
Miller said the university handled the increase in testing samples well — although it was operating at about maximum processing capacity, processing nearly 40,000 tests from March 8-15.
Oglesbee said although the university’s testing numbers are impressive, much of the success is because it is a college campus.
“You have to have a population that is compelled to be tested, you have to have an organization that’s invested in spending the resources to do the testing and report the results,” Oglesbee said. “And I think a lot of that is pretty unique to a university environment.”
