BECKLEY, WV (WOAY) – WVU Tech has started their three-day campaign to test every single person who will be on campus this fall.
They’ll be testing all 1,100 students and the hundreds of faculty and staff members. WVU Tech Campus President Carolyn Long says testing everybody is essential to starting the semester off safely.
“If we don’t know where we’re starting from, then we don’t know if we have a problem or if we don’t. And plus the fact that it will help us if we do have asymptomatic students, faculty, or staff; that if they know it and we’re not exposing other people to them.”
There are dozens of local volunteers helping out with the testing. They’ve set up both indoor and outdoor testing, which is socially-distanced and conducted in a safe manner.
“We have faculty that are volunteering to help, we have a lot of our nursing students, our nursing faculty, Dr. Larry Rhodes helping us and a lot of volunteers.”
The testing is free and also required for everyone staying on campus. Anyone not attending campus such as those taking online courses will not be required to be tested. Long says that it’s crucial everyone coming back to campus participates in the testing.
“We hope everyone will participate. It’s important to us to make sure that we know we aren’t exposing people. The big thing about Tech is we don’t want to only take care of ourselves, we want to take care of each other. And that’s why we’re gonna wear our masks, wash our hands, get tested and make this work.”
It’s expected that there will be a total of 1300-1400 people tested over the next three days. And test results are expected to have a quick turnaround at just 3-5 days.
Classes start at WVU Tech on August 19.
