Tufts University is teaming up with its host cities — Medford and Somerville — to offer an inexpensive coronavirus monitoring plan called “pooled testing” that officials say could expedite communities’ ability to return to and maintain in-person learning.
“This cost-effective solution provides a way for local school districts to hold in-person instruction while confidently knowing they will be able to identify and control potential spread of the virus,” said Anthony P. Monaco, Tufts University president and renowned geneticist who designed the strategy.
Pooled testing works by analyzing nasal swabs in batches rather than individually, which will allow school districts to test multiple students at once. The program allows for frequent, system-wide testing of school staff and students — enabling schools to intervene early to stop the virus from spreading — but is less expensive than large-scale individual testing because it requires only a fraction of the analysis.
The program, developed and validated by Tufts, enables the Medford and Somerville school districts to administer tests to students, faculty, and staff for approximately one-third of the cost of individual testing. Tufts has agreed to split the cost of testing with the cities, but a final agreement has yet to be reached.
Eight swabs will be packaged in a single tube and sent to the Broad Institute and if a pool comes back positive, everyone in the pool will be tested individually so health officials can isolate cases, conduct contact tracing and quarantine infected individuals and their close contacts.
Under the direction of school staff or EMTs, teachers and high school students will sample the front part of their noses with a non-invasive swab. Younger students will be swabbed by a nurse or EMT.
Testing is particularly important in densely populated cities like Somerville and in areas where many multi-generational families reside — like Medford. Coronavirus is most often spread inside the home among family members, according to state contact tracing data.
Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone said the testing will help schools open “as safely as possible and create the conditions that will help keep them open.” Somerville schools remain entirely remote and the city has been listed as red — at the highest risk — of coronavirus spread.
“No student or family benefits when new virus outbreaks cause schools to see-saw from open to closed and back again. This universal testing plan plus the robust contact tracing we are putting in place is designed to break that cycle and better protect student and staff health,” said Curtatone.
Medford has already begun hybrid instruction for kindergarten through fourth grade and sixth grade students. Fifth-graders return next week. Middle School could be back by mid-November, followed by high schoolers. Tufts has already offered weekly testing for Medford teachers, administering about 900 tests in October as they started hybrid learning.
“Our school staff testing partnership with Tufts has allowed us to get our teachers and students back into the classroom with the added safety of knowing about a potential staff exposure in our schools, and with the ability to be proactive in our efforts at containing the spread of COVID-19,” said Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn. “
