Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, has today (Monday, 12 July 2021) urged staff and students to volunteer to be part of rapid testing and other testing surveillance systems on college campuses.
The project, called UniCoV, will conduct a large-scale analysis of testing technologies for Covid-19 surveillance and prevention in higher education.These will include rapid antigen testing, saliva-based PCR testing and wastewater surveillance. The results of the project will help to develop early warning systems, for future outbreak prevention and control.
Staff and students can enrol across four universities – NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and University College Cork.Testing volunteers will provide saliva samples twice a week and drop them off at on-campus collection points. These samples will go through PCR or LAMP testing.
On the same day, those volunteers will take a self-administered rapid nasal swab antigen test, and upload a photo of their result from their phone to the secure unicov.org website. The website also includes a detailed information leaflet, instructional videos and an informed consent document.
The UniCoV study will also include wastewater monitoring. Wastewater samples will be collected from each campus site and analysed for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
A live dashboard will provide anonymised aggregate information about each campus’ results. This is a key part of the surveillance system and will allow for early warning of any potential outbreak.