By Marco Tellez
School districts in Bexar county will be tested in large groups starting this month. These mass testings will be provided by the San Antonio company Community Labs.
Community Labs is a non-profit organization that has begun searching for “silent spreaders”—a term in the medical field describing people infected with the coronavirus that don’t show any symptoms—in the county. Starting out in Somerset ISD, a southwest district in Bexar county, Community Labs is able to perform around 600 tests a day and get results within 24 hours. The process involves rubbing a small Q-tip in each nostril for five seconds before placing it in the test tube.
“Our take on the best approach to this pandemic is to develop as a high volume screening capability where we can screen the healthy people, and the people who might be infectious, and then let them know as quickly as possible,” Community Labs President Sal Webber told Kens5 news.
The organization uses their screening process to first assess small, isolated communities they call “mirco populations”, with schools being their prime example. Webber is assisted by other philanthropic individuals from San Antonio, including Community Labs chairman Graham Weston. Founder of the web-hosting and cloud-computing site Rackspace.com, Weston helped create the organization after contracting the coronavirus from his asymptomatic son. Starting with these small communities, the group next goal is to develop a screening system that will be used in multiple cities across the state.
“We can never really suppress the virus and give people the confidence to go back when we have silent spreaders walking through our population,” Weston told Express News.
The testing in Somerset would first include students in extracurricular activities, school staff, nurses and campus officers. Students would only be tested if parents signed a consent form.
“We need students in the classroom because that’s where they learn best, and we hope that this strategy will lessen the concern of parents, along with the anxiety, to where they feel confident that the school campus is a safe environment for the kids,” Weston said.
For anyone considering to get tested, they can go to the Cuellar Community Center, the Ramirez Community Center or AT&T Center. All three locations are open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and do not require an appointment. More information concerning the coronavirus is available at covid19.sanantonio.gov.