Pennsylvania To Offer Weekly COVID-19 Testing Program For Schools
HARRISBURG (AP/KDKA) - Pennsylvania will offer voluntary COVID-19 testing in all K-12 schools, state health and education officials announced Monday.
School districts will have to opt in, and parents must give consent.
For participating school districts, the weekly tests will be conducted in classrooms. Students' nasal swabs will be pooled and run as a single test to identify the presence of COVID-19 in a school.
Boston-based Concentric by Ginkgo Bioworks, which operates statewide programs in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Arizona, North Carolina and other states, was awarded an $87 million contract to run Pennsylvania's program for the upcoming school year.
"Early detection like this is exactly what we need to keep students in classrooms, and COVID out," Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said at a news conference.
Separately, Beam also ordered vaccine providers to coordinate vaccine clinics at schools and universities that request them.
Beam says the two initiatives are meant to help K-12 schools and colleges maintain in-person learning and other extracurriculars.
"Unfortunately, we continue to see predominately unvaccinated Pennsylvanians infected with multiple variants of COVID-19, including the highly contagious Delta variant. This reinforces the need for accessible COVID-19 vaccinations for eligible individuals in K-12 schools so that our students, teachers and staff can stay safe," says Beam.
The two iniatives will be funded by $338 million from the CDC.
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