Trinity will have on-site coronavirus testing facilities in the new academic year to prevent clusters developing in the College community.
The College Health Service is implementing testing facilities for staff and students ahead of the beginning of term.
Speaking to The University Times, Dr David McGrath, director of the College Health Service said that it was having testing facilities was “absolutely critical for the re-opening of the College and for the College to be able to stay open and for us to control things as much as possible”.
“If a staff member or a student has symptoms on any given day and they phone the health centre, what we can do is take out the lag time between the test being ordered and the test being completed.”
McGrath said that because of the large backlog in testing in March, April and May, there was a period when testing some people was redundant because it was “more than two weeks since they had the symptoms and even if we test them now and the test is positive it doesn’t matter because they are no longer infectious”.
A key concern for McGrath and the wider College Health Service is the development of clusters within the Trinity community, with McGrath pointing to accommodation as a particular concern for College.
McGrath said, however, that testing would “as far as possible reduce the development of clusters within the College particularly within student accommodation because that’s really the biggest risk we have for students in terms of them being able to complete the year in any normal way”.
McGrath also said that due to the location of Trinity within Dublin city centre, the College has a responsibility to the public to prevent clusters from developing in the city.
“We have to remember that we are in the city centre of Dublin and we have a duty of care to the public. We don’t want to be in any way seen to be a focus point for COVID-19 so we have to do everything we can to mitigate against that, and having our own testing centre will be really important for that”.
The College Health Service is in the process of recruiting two additional nurses to help increase the operational capacity of the service and allow for the establishment of the testing centre.
Trinity’s buildings will have isolation rooms for staff and students who develop coronavirus symptoms on campus.
Documents outlining the re-opening plans of College’s various schools identify specific rooms where anyone who feels unwell with flu-like symptoms should go.
The isolation rooms will be equipped with hand sanitiser, wipes, tissues, face masks, latex gloves and a clinical-waste disposal bin. The designated rooms all have windows which can be easily opened in order to ventilate the room.
The unwell individual will be instructed to wear a face mask at all times and to avoid touching people, surfaces and objects.
The individual will then be instructed on how to proceed home, either via their own personal transportation such as by car or bike, or via a taxi service that College will be hiring for to transport sick individuals home.
