Thousands Of North Texas Teachers Asked To Take COVID-19 Antibody Tests
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Thousands of Fort Worth ISD teachers received an email from UT-Southwestern Medical Center on Thursday asking them to take part in a COVID-19 prevalence study.
Those who sign up will be tested for the active virus as well as be given a COVID-19 antibody blood test.
The antibody test will show if they've ever had the virus even if they never had any symptoms.
Fort Worth ISD teachers are not required to participate.
UT-Southwestern is hoping to test 14,000 teachers along with another 30,000 people in Dallas and Tarrant counties to better understand who has COVID-19 and how it's spreading in North Texas.
"One population that's of particular interest are teachers," said Dr. Amit Singal. "We've seen a lot of anxiety from parents. We've seen a lot of anxiety from school administrators in terms of the safety of our kids and the safety of our teachers. "
Researchers said local data will help policy makers make more informed decisions about how to mitigate and contain the spread of the virus.
"Texas data is the only data that is applicable to Texas," Singal said. "We can't use data from New York. We can't use data from California and apply it to our communities."
If you are interested in participating, you can sign up and find more information here.
