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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]agree on the PP on testing front - but Test Yourself DC is going to have to ramp up for demand that's clearly already picking up from school - tested my child at the end of last school week (Sat am when tests were available) - still no results back - assuming they are flooded with school start....[/quote]

I would love to see info on testing capacity and if it would be possible to ramp it up. However, I do want to note we tested our kid on Thursday of last week and got results back Saturday. I have heard many people complain about "delays" in test results after testing Friday or Saturday. But it was a long weekend. So I highly recommend that anyone using Test Yourself for asymptomatic testing, try to do the test midweek and get it to the drop box by Thursday morning at the latest. If you wait until Friday or Saturday to test, it will push you into the following week, and they will have to clear the backlog.

But yes, they should ramp up testing capacity no matter what. I am guessing lack of capacity is why they aren't formally pushing DCPS families to use the program because this is the obvious solution for testing in schools. It's less disruptive of the school day if parents test kids at home, and if we use Test Yourself we could potential get even more than 10% of DCPS students tested regularly, which is the target for the in-school testing that they've never reached.[/quote]

You're missing the point.  The 10% testing was never intended to be a screening test -- it's a surveillance test, to monitor the overall rates.  What we SHOULD be doing with testing (since resources are limited) is a "test to stay" policy where close contacts test every day.  [/quote]

But the Test Yourself program could do both. Schools could put the kits in backpacks once a week and request that families bring them back the next day for the on-campus drop box. Even if only 10% of families brought them back, that could be a powerful surveillance tool. No, it's not a perfect sample because there will be some bias in who brings back tests. But since the current testing program is getting far less than 10% anyway, it's not necessarily an inferior sample. Plus the Test Yourself kits are PCR tests with nasal swabs, whereas the school testing protocol is a saliva test, which is much harder to administer with small kids (and may be less accurate).

But you could also use the program to do what you are talking about. You send kits home with any kids in a "close contacts" list and ask parents to drop off their test each morning in order to drop off kids, to avoid quarantine. Significantly easier to implement than trying to get schools to test large groups of students daily (disruptive and logistically challenging, as we've seen with the amount of testing already undergone), but also much easier for families who will not need to obtain tests themselves. All they need to do is take a few moment to do a nasal swap before leaving for school. Fun? No. Better than quarantining, though.[/quote]

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