Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick. (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Testing and Contact Tracing
- COVID-19
- FAQ
- Testing and Contact Tracing
Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick. (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
We have a process in place to test you for COVID-19 within 24 hours of your campus arrival, and you will be assigned a test time based on your move-in slot. We will be testing on February 10 – 11. Faculty, staff, and some essential student workers will be tested a few days prior to this.
We will be conducting a second round of tests 7 days after your first test. This second round of testing will complete the “baseline” testing for spring semester. The College will cover the costs of testing.
The College has partnered with Bridge Lane Global and a Minnesota lab to conduct mass testing to reestablish our second semester “bubble” and for weekly surveillance testing.
Similar to the testing we conducted prior to Thanksgiving, at the end of first semester, the mass testing event will be held in Tostrud field house using saliva tests. The weekly surveillance tests will also use saliva tests and we expect results 24 hours from when the lab receives the tests. You will receive test results via email and if your test is positive, we will also call you directly to work through next steps.
Testing is not optional. All students, faculty, and staff returning to campus must be tested.The only exceptions to this policy are those individuals who have had a positive test within the previous 90 days. Even those individuals will still participate in the initial quarantine period with their peers.
All students will be expected to quarantine on campus until the college has completed its baseline testing process and received the results (anticipated to take slightly over two weeks). Students will not be permitted to leave campus during this period of time. They will be permitted to attend classes and other activities as long as they observe physical distancing, face covering, hand hygiene and other health and safety guidelines.
From the time you arrive to the time we receive the results from the second round of testing, you will need to stay on campus and remain within your residence hall “family,” limiting yourself to attending class, meals, and other essential activities. Students living off campus will need to limit their activities to their residence and campus. During this time, it is critical that you adhere strictly to the prevention measures (e.g., physical distancing, face coverings, etc.) outlined in our Community Standards. We expect that we will have some positive test results in our baseline testing; until those cases are identified and the student moves to isolation to recover, we need to take reasonable steps to mitigate the transmission of the virus on campus.
The College will conduct ongoing, randomized testing throughout the semester. Each week, a percentage of the College’s students, faculty, and staff will be tested. Individuals may receive an email at some point asking them to participate in one of these tests. Randomized testing reduces the chances of an outbreak by testing asymptomatic individuals who wouldn’t otherwise know they are infected. The College will also cover the costs of these tests.
Positive cases will be reported weekly on the College’s COVID-19 website.
Those in close contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 will be required to quarantine for 14 days. As appropriate, this can be within your room on campus, a designated space on campus, or at your home (if, as stated above, it is within regional driving distance and your family composition and home layout are conducive to quarantine). Close contact is defined by the Minnesota Department of Health as contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case within six feet for more than 15 cumulative minutes in a 24-hour period.
The college has reserved designated houses and rooms where students who test positive for COVID-19 will isolate. Students will be transported to the house with the items they need for isolation (clothing, toiletries, study materials), and the college will coordinate meal delivery for them. Students who have recently had close contact with a person with COVID-19 should stay in their living quarters and monitor their health. Meals will also be delivered to those in quarantine.
Once a minimum of 10 days of isolation is completed, the individual’s symptoms are improving (they feel better), and the individual has gone 24 hours without a fever without the use of medication, they will be released from isolation by their contact tracer.
We understand your concern about returning to your home at the end of the semester amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that students are COVID-free as they leave campus. Even if everyone were to be tested, an individual can contract the virus at any time between when the test is administered and their return home — including the few days between getting tested and receiving the results, as well as during their travels home. Testing during the final two weeks (which is the amount of time the virus could take to incubate) of the semester is also logistically challenging given that students and faculty are focused on finals, and many students leave campus at different times.
There are, however, a number of steps we can take as a campus community to help ensure that students remain healthy as they return home. As we outlined in a recent community-wide message, for the remaining weeks of the semester students must stay on campus and may not visit residence halls or honor houses other than their own. All meal times in Stav Hall will be by appointment, and all events must be pre-approved.
In addition, students are strongly encouraged to eat and socialize with a small group of friends for the rest of the term and — most importantly — to lay low for the 14 days before returning home. Given your concerns, you may want to reduce your interactions with others as much as possible by staying in your room as much as you can, especially in the final week.
Since everyone’s situation is different, other ideas for your transition home could include quarantining in your room at home for the first two weeks or at another location if that option is available to you. This additional step may provide you with more peace of mind regarding your family.
Please remember that while you are traveling home — whether that is by car or plane — it is imperative that you continue to maintain physical distance from others and wear a face mask throughout the duration of your travels, including while carpooling to or from an airport with friends.
Finally, there are a number of free tests being offered throughout the state. Please check this link. You would be responsible for getting yourself to a testing location.
We want to acknowledge that these are difficult choices and that each individual has to decide what works for them.
St. Olaf takes the health and safety of its community very seriously, and our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been very thorough. Our philosophy regarding testing is and has been to only utilize the highest standard of testing available. We have chosen throughout the pandemic to only use RT-PCR technology.
We have used three different laboratories thus far during this pandemic: Mayo Clinic Laboratories; Vault Health, which uses Infinity Biologix laboratory; and Infectolab Americas. All three laboratories use the same RT-PCR technology. All of these tests are not rapid tests or Antigen tests. In each case the laboratory is looking for specific genes of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the virus that causes COVID-19), which when detected indicate that the person from which the sample is collected is positive for the virus. That individual can be asymptomatic and still have the virus.
We have used three different collection methods. Although the sample collection method has been different, the RT-PCR test run in the laboratory has been the same.
Our current laboratory, Infectolab Americas, is located in Minneapolis and is a CLIA certified high complexity laboratory. It is a private lab that is able to prioritize St. Olaf’s samples, ensuring the most rapid turnaround time for a non-rapid test. Our collection method is saliva. The laboratory then takes the samples and pools 10 of the samples together by taking small droplets from each individual vial. The pools are then run in the exact machine with the exact reagents as an individual test is run. If the pool comes out negative, all 10 samples are negative. If the pool comes out positive, each of the 10 tests is run as a separate PCR test to determine which sample(s) is positive. Once positive sample(s) are identified, the test is run again on that sample to confirm.
The following chart compares and contrasts the slight differences between the laboratories that St. Olaf has used for our testing program.
| Mayo Clinic Laboratory | Vault Health/Infinity Biologix | Infectolab Americas | |
| Type of Test | RT-PCR | RT-PCR | RT-PCR |
| Specificity | 99-100% | 99-100% | 99-100% |
| Sensitivity | 99-100% | 99-100% | 99-100% |
| Collection method | Anterior Nasal Swab | Saliva + preservative
Saliva is mixed with a solution which serves as a preservative and stabilizer for the virus, allowing it to survive up to a week without refrigeration. |
Saliva |
| Extraction method | Nasal Swab is placed in a solution and droplets from the solution are put on the tray to be tested. | In order to be run the RNA must be purified from the preservative as an additional step before placing droplets of the extracted saliva on the tray to be tested. | Droplets are taken directly from the saliva sample and pooled with nine other samples. Positive pools are run individually. Individual positives are run an additional time as confirmation. |
| Reporting time | 24-48 hours after sample is collected | 48-72 hours after sample is collected | Under 24 hours after sample is collected |
| CLIA Certified Lab | CLIA Waived | Yes | Yes |
| FDA EUA Test | Yes | Yes | Yes |
A student will be isolated for 10 days in a house or other isolation facility. They will also have the choice of having a family member pick them up so they can isolate at home. Faculty and staff are expected to isolate at home.
A Contact Tracing Team made up of St. Olaf staff will reach you after a positive result to help ascertain who you may have been in contact with and when. Each team member underwent six hours of training through Johns Hopkins to learn about the process and how to keep confidentiality. After learning of a potential exposure, they will call the person you came in contact with and only reveal that they may have been exposed and the date when the exposure occurred. No names or events will be shared.
The Team is in contact with the Minnesota Department of Health to share information so that county and state statics can be constantly updated. St. Olaf will not be informing an individual’s health care provider or family members of test results.
St. Olaf will treat all test results as confidential. We will use the information gathered only for the purposes of notifying the Department of Health of any positive tests, ensuring those who test positive isolate for an appropriate period of time, and for contact tracing purposes to help prevent the spread of the virus on campus. The information will not be used for any other purposes. After the information is used at the beginning of the academic year for our reopening purposes, it will not be stored in any student or personnel files, or any other college database.
When you signed up for testing you received the informed consent form that all individuals will need to sign on the day of testing. By providing the form in advance, we hoped to give you an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the form in order to help expedite the testing process when you go to have the test performed. Before undergoing the test you will be asked again to acknowledge your consent to testing. Before doing so you can and should ask whatever questions you have of the health professionals who will be administering the tests, and if for any reason you’re not comfortable moving forward with testing you can withdraw your consent to testing.
The Contact Tracing team has put together this handout containing protocols for students who receive a positive COVID-19 test or are awaiting symptomatic test results.