The monumental effort to scale up campus COVID-19 testing
Key facts and figures point to the scale of the Penn Cares testing program and how Project Quaker helped bring students back to campus this spring.
As of mid-March, more than 140,000 saliva-based tests for COVID-19 have been conducted since the start of the spring semester Penn Cares testing program.
A major component of Penn’s efforts to bring students back to campus this spring has been the Penn Cares testing program. Using a saliva-based testing platform, Penn can conduct twice-weekly tests for all undergraduate students and those living on campus and weekly tests for graduate students, faculty, postdocs, and staff who are on campus for four or more hours each week.
Launching this massive new COVID-19 screening program was made possible through a partnership between Penn Medicine, Wellness at Penn, and the Center for Public Health Initiatives (CPHI). This massive collaborative effort, known as Project Quaker, was essential for setting up the infrastructure of supplies, space, equipment, and staff needed to increase testing capacity on campus.
Penn Today highlights key facts and figures about the Penn Cares testing program, and how Project Quaker helped bring students back to campus for the spring semester.
140,910
The total number of tests completed since Jan. 3. So far, more than 20,000 members of the Penn community have been tested since the program was launched earlier this year and more than 12,000 tests have been conducted on a weekly basis since the start of February.
Testing data are updated weekly on Penn’s COVID-19 dashboard, which also provides information on positivity rates, overall prevalence, and the numbers of students in quarantine or isolation.
27
The total gallons of saliva collected by Penn Cares for testing (for each test, participants collect 1 mL of saliva).
This easy, safe, and non-invasive approach to COVID-19 testing produces results that are just as accurate and sensitive as the nasal swab tests that were used on campus this fall.
804
The number of people tested during a single hour at the High Rise/Du Bois tent at Rodin Field last week.
The success of Penn’s testing sites is made possible thanks to staff who are using their expertise in event management and logistics, experience that is instrumental in the smooth operation of multiple large-scale testing sites.
7
The number of testing sites available across campus.
Six of these sites—High Rise/Dubois tent, Annenberg Center, Richards tent, Houston Hall, the Palestra, and Ace Adams tent—are reserved for COVID-19 screening tests. The site in Irvine auditorium is used for PennOpen Pass “red pass” testing.
Other supplies provided by EHRS to labs across campus include 600 thermometers, 346 face shields, and more than 800 buckets of disinfectant.
62
The number of staff from all areas of the University who were reassigned to support COVID-19 mitigation efforts and programs. This includes staff who became directly involved with Project Quaker as well as those who were re-trained to work as contact tracers.
A number of staff have been reassigned to support COVID-19 mitigation efforts and programs, from supporting Project Quaker to working as contact tracers.
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
