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This message has been distributed to all UT employees with Principal Investigator (PI) status, as well as all UT graduate students and postdocs.
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Dear PI Colleagues, Graduate Students, and Postdocs,
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| Along with the Fall 2020 Planning Executive Committee, I continue to closely monitor the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Travis County. At present, on-campus research activities will remain at Research Level 3 (ultralow density). While there are no changes to policy now, everyone should vigilantly follow preventative precautions both on and off campus, including wearing cloth masks around others, maintaining social distancing, and following best practices for handwashing.
I have several testing updates to share with you this week. These will be most relevant to those of you conducting research on campus under Research Level 3. (Please note that for consistency across UT, we’re now using the term level instead of phase to describe on-campus research operations.)
Testing Clarification and Updates
In my last email, I let you know that no positive COVID-19 results had been confirmed among researchers working on campus in either of our June proactive community (aka, asymptomatic) testing pop-ups. I want to clarify that one researcher not working on campus at the time did test positive in a pop-up and subsequently self-isolated for 10 days. Because this person had not been working on campus, no campus research spaces were affected, and no actions were or are required for researchers on campus as a result.
Since June 1, however, Occupational Health (OHP), University Health Services (UHS) and Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) have received and responded to four notifications of researchers who were symptomatic and tested positive for COVID-19. These researchers sought testing on their own (either through their healthcare providers or Austin Public Health) and then shared the results with UT. When a researcher is symptomatic and notifies OHP (or UHS, for graduate students), two things can happen right away:
- Contact tracing begins so that anyone they’ve been in close contact with — on or off campus — is notified;
- EHS determines if decontamination or temporary room closures are necessary — which is why it’s so important that you notify UHS or OHP if you are ever symptomatic or test positive for COVID-19.
Symptomatic vs. Proactive Community Testing
It’s true that we are saying both that “no on-campus researchers tested positive” and that “four researchers tested positive.” I want to clarify these statements, though, because I realize they sound contradictory.
There are two ways that UT tracks COVID-19 cases:
- As I just described, all students, faculty, and staff — whether on or off campus — are asked to notify OHP or UHS if they receive a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. This reporting is voluntary but strongly encouraged so that we can identify close contacts and decontaminate or close a workspace, if needed.
- At the same time, UT has been conducting proactive community (or asymptomatic) testing among those who are on campus this summer. This type of testing is also voluntary, but it’s different from going to your health care provider or an Austin Public Health testing center.
For proactive community testing, we test a subset of people on campus who currently show no COVID-19 symptoms. The goal is to see if we can detect emerging cases early and isolate them right away. These tests also serve as an indicator for how many people, on campus right now, may have COVID-19. Proactive community testing thus helps us understand if we should stay at Research Level 3, or if we need to make adjustments.
This kind of campus testing has limitations. Proactive community (or asymptomatic) testing is voluntary, so people may choose not to participate. Additionally, it’s not possible to test everyone who does volunteer, unfortunately. Still, once we find out about a positive case through testing on campus or because a person reports their diagnosis to UHS or OHP, the university can begin contact tracing and room decontamination or closure, if necessary.
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Our hope is that with both of these tracking measures in place, we can have a clearer picture about the health of our community to make more informed decisions. A new University COVID-19 dashboard is available that tracks results from both symptomatic and proactive community testing.
The dashboard displays COVID-19 cases found among UT employees and students working on campus as well as those who are working remotely who have notified UHS or OHP that they’ve tested positive for COVID-19. (And in the fall, the dashboard will also include positive COVID-19 cases among students attending classes on campus.) The dashboard also tracks the results from proactive community testing of researchers and other campus populations.
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Proactive Community Testing Changes
You’ve probably seen in the news recently that Austin is limiting COVID-19 testing to those who are symptomatic because of the large rise in cases and high testing demand. Because of these strict testing capacity limits, UHS now must suspend proactive community testing on campus as well. However, UT’s Center for Biomedical Research Support (CBRS) will have the capacity to analyze COVID-19 tests on site. They plan to use this capacity both to support symptomatic testing for the City of Austin and for processing our on-campus proactive community (asymptomatic) tests. I will follow up with more information about UT testing resources as it becomes available.
New FAQ Site
Last but not least, we have a new, fully searchable FAQ site. Please bookmark this page and check back periodically because we’ll be updating questions regularly. In the coming days, we’ll be adding answers to many of the research-related questions posed during our June town halls. Also, many of the steps and processes I’ve described here can also be found in our Research Restart Toolkit, which is being updated regularly as well.
Thank you as always for your understanding and patience as we navigate this ever-changing process.
Sincerely,
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Alison R. Preston, Ph.D.
Interim Vice President for Research
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