ATHENS, WV (WOAY) – Governor Justice announced recently that he’s allotting state funding to all colleges and universities to test their employees for COVID-19.
According to Concord’s Vice President of Operations Dan Fitzpatrick, in order to abide by this initiative, they are planning a large-scale testing event for all of their employees.
“The current plan is to have all employees, faculty, staff, and also our associated contractors. Anyone who’s actually physically working on campus.”
They say that testing all of their 400 employees and contractors might be an overabundance of caution, but they’re also conducting the testing to establish a general idea of just how many people that will be returning to campus will have COVID-19. The more people they test, the more they know for the future.
“It’s being done of course out of an abundance of caution, but the main purpose is to establish a baseline. So we’ll know here at the beginning of the year where we stand with COVID cases.”
Later throughout the fall, they’ll be testing random employees again every week. This is to help catch asymptomatic cases and keep everyone safe. As well, any staff member or student who even has minor symptoms of COVID-19 will be required to be tested.
“It’s important to us. We take that safety responsibility very seriously .And we have taken actions above and beyond what the CDC has set forth.”
The testing events will take place at Concord inside their gymnasium on August 12, 14 and 17 from 8 A.M. to 3 P.M. The first two hours will be dedicated to employee testing. The tests are being conducted inside the gymnasium because they considered it the best place to set up a station and still maintain enough space for social distancing.
It’s expected that Concord will test nearly 2000 people, including faculty, staff and students, at the testing event.
