First Covid-19 Tests Carried Out on Campus

On Monday morning at 8.30 a.m., the students of a practical chemistry class came to TU Dort­mund University’s testing center. In line with current federal state law, their course is allowed to take place because it cannot run online and further postponing it would lead to substantial delays in study progress. At the present time, the class is even allowed without testing, but the students and their supervisors nonetheless voluntarily took part in a pilot trial at the university. They tested a procedure which could be used to conduct mass Covid-19 testing on campus in the summer semester.

The sampling method is very simple: First you suck on a cotton swab for 30 seconds, then you insert it into your left and right nostril. The samples collected using this “popsicle method” can be analyzed in the laboratory by means of PCR. So that this is as efficient as possible, ten samples at a time are collected in a container and analyzed together. If the result is negative, evidently none of the ten people is infected. If the result is positive, the respective B samples are then analyzed individually. The lower the incidence rate, the less often these second tests are necessary.

Collaboration with Klinikum Dort­mund

In the shape of Klinikum Dort­mund, TU Dort­mund University has been able to recruit a partner who is not only implementing the new method in the framework of a research project but has also even already validated it. A swab from a single infected person leads to a positive result in a pooled test too, as the hospital established with the help of its own control samples. The tests of the TU members, on the other hand, were all negative, and they were notified of the results today.