Gwinnett County Public Schools will begin to pilot voluntary random COVID-19 testing at the end of this month at Norcross and Paul Duke STEM High Schools and the eight elementary and middle schools that feed into them.
Known as “surveillance testing,” it will be available to faculty who opt in and students who have parent permission, Al Taylor, associate superintendent of school improvement and operations, told the school board on Thursday.
The announcement about testing comes as Georgia battles an increase in coronavirus cases due to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant.
The state has the nation’s fourth-highest number of children currently hospitalized with COVID-19, according to health data. Only one in five Georgians between the ages of 12 and 17 is fully vaccinated. Children under age 12 are not eligible for vaccines.
The PCR tests for COVID-19 will likely be administered twice a week among randomly selected participants, Taylor said. The results of those tests are available within 24 hours.
Students who come to school buildings with COVID-19 symptoms will, with legal consent, be able to take a rapid antigen test that produces results in 15 minutes, Taylor said.
“This does give us an opportunity to maybe rule out probable cases where the kid is just ill or suffering from allergies,” Taylor said.
The testing will eventually be available to other schools in the district, Taylor said.
A state grant is paying for the testing, he said. The amount of the grant, and the number of tests it will pay for, was not available Thursday, the district said.
Atlanta Public Schools has been conducting voluntary surveillance testing since February.
This story has been updated.
About the Author
