The Centers for Disease Control is looking to the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh for ways to slow the spread of the coronavirus on college campuses. Throughout October the CDC will study how reliable antigen testing is to monitor spread of COVID-19 among UWO students, including those who are asymptomatic. Kim Langolf is the risk manager and project lead for UWO’s COVID-19 Response. She says UWO has one of the most robust status sets for antigen testing in the country. She says the CDC reached out to the college because they were curious how how antigen testing behaves in a younger community like college-age students. Unlike the PCR test, antigen test results are ready much sooner allowing the school to respond quicker in preventing outbreaks. Langolf says without the antigen testing she thinks the number of students infected with the virus would be much worse. With COVID outbreaks occurring on college campuses across the country, Langolf says she is cautiously optimistic that through antigen testing UWO can stay open and become a model for other schools across the country. The CDC study comes as UWO is seeing a decline in its positive test rate over the past seven days, followinga surge as students moved back to c ampus for the start of the fall semester last month.
