Dear Editor,

I would like to add to the article in last Thursday’s DM about mass testing for COVID on campus.

The university calls mass testing “sentinel testing” or “surveillance testing.” We want to find out what percentage of asymptomatic people have the SARS-CoV-2 virus and are potential spreaders of COVID. If this percentage is 1%, that means only one person in a group of 100 likely has the virus asymptomatically. But if the percentage is 5%, that means one person in a group of 20 has the virus asymptomatically. And in a group of 50 unmasked fraternity members, if the percentage is 5%, two or three were infected with the virus. If the percentage is 2%, one of them had it.

If the percentage is 20%, don’t get in a car with four other people.

We need to know what the percentage is on our campus, so students, faculty and staff can adjust their behavior accordingly. This knowledge empowers us to take measures that will get us back to normal as quickly as possible.

Invitations to do the survey are being sent out in direct proportion to how many people in a given category are on campus. Students receive 85% of the invitations, staff 9% and faculty 6%.

In the first week, 14.5% of the invited students responded to the invitation. Fewer than half of those actually followed through to receive the test. Roughly 30% of the staff responded, and two-thirds of those were tested. Approximately 36% of the faculty responded, and two-thirds of them were tested. 3,392 students were invited, 380 staff and 228 faculty: 4,000 invitations in all.

By my calculations, this means some 3,300 people ignored the invitation for a free COVID test. Some of them may have had COVID already, some may be off-campus and some may have had symptoms so they knew they would be ineligible. Some people only skim their emails, but email is the principal means of official communication on campus, and in the middle of a pandemic, it is especially important to pay attention to it.

There is a demand for free testing, but it is troubling that the offer for free testing has so far elicited an underwhelming response.

Again, it will be very helpful to know what percentage of people on campus are infected with SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatically. No matter what category you fall into (student, faculty, or staff), if you are invited to test, please test.

Jean Gispen is a physician with the University of Mississippi Employee Health Service.

Dear Editor,

I would like to add to the article in last Thursday’s DM about mass testing for COVID on campus.

If the percentage is 20%, don’t get in a car with four other people.

Invitations to do the survey are being sent out in direct proportion to how many people in a given category are on campus. Students receive 85% of the invitations, staff 9% and faculty 6%.

There is a demand for free testing, but it is troubling that the offer for free testing has so far elicited an underwhelming response.

Jean Gispen is a physician with the University of Mississippi Employee Health Service.

Republish this article

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Unless otherwise noted, you can republish most of The Daily Mississippian’s stories for free under a Creative Commons license.

For digital publications:
Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the HTML code and paste it into your Content Management System (CMS).
Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
Any website our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @thedailymississippian on Facebook and @thedm_news on X (formerly Twitter).

For print publications:
You have to credit The Daily Mississippian. We prefer “Author Name, The Daily Mississippian” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by The Daily Mississippian” and include our website, thedmonline.com.
You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Michael Guidry for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
Any website our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
If you have any other questions, contact the Student Media Center at Ole Miss.

Letter to the Editor: UM asymptomatic testing is free, but there is a cost if we don’t participate.

In Case You Missed It

Letter to the Editor: UM asymptomatic testing is free, but there is a cost if we don’t participate.

In Case You Missed It

Republish this article

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Queue