USC Student Health To Expand Daily Coronavirus Testing With Minimum 500 Daily Tests

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — USC Student Health is expanding COVID-19 testing as part of its strategy to help keep students, faculty and staff safe on its campuses, the department announced Thursday.

USC will begin ramping up to a minimum of 500 tests per day for students and on-site faculty and staff.

The university will also set up three observed sample-collection sites and will eventually transition to an unobserved self-collection model, to increase access to fast, convenient and efficient surveillance testing, according to Dr. Sarah Van Orman, USC's Student Health's chief health officer.

"By increasing our testing capacity, we will be able to more quickly capture and contain sources of infection," Van Orman said.

Van Orman added that the school is partnering with Color, a company that specializes in distributed healthcare and clinical testing.

"USC is at the forefront of implementing a responsible, evidence-based program to optimize a safe campus," said Color CEO Othman Laraki. "Convenient and regular surveillance testing with rapid turnaround times can significantly reduce the risk of a campus outbreak."

The population surveillance testing program, named "Pop Testing," is scheduled to begin in August with current summer campus constituents and expand to the larger campus populations throughout the fall semester.

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