Thank you to everyone who has participated in the Southampton COVID-19 Testing Programme this term.
Your final tests of the year must be dropped off by 12.30pm on Friday 18 December. Testing will then re-start in January, and the programme team will contact registered staff directly with further instructions.
Staff who are coming onto campus for the first time in Semester 2 will receive information about signing up for the programme in January.
Our students will be encouraged to test 1, 4 and 8 days after arriving back in Southampton, to give confidence that they do not have the virus at the start of the new term.
If you are travelling abroad over Christmas, you must follow the government’s guidance on quarantine/self-isolation when you return to the UK. You will not be able to use our saliva test as part of the government’s Test to Release scheme. If you want to reduce your quarantine period from 10 to 5 days, then you should contact an approved Test to Release testing provider.
Some stats from the autumn term
By the end of November, the programme had conducted more than 65,000 tests at the University and four local schools, 123 of which were positive.
During the period covered by the programme, the number of people testing positive across the city of Southampton, and in almost all other UK universities, increased exponentially, but no such rise was seen in the University of Southampton population while we continued some face-to-face teaching. Our regular testing programme was likely to have contributed to keeping levels low in our community by identifying asymptomatic positive cases and breaking chains of transmission.
The testing programme team submitted a detailed evaluation to the government as part of this pilot programme, including some stats on uptake among our student and staff community:
- Over the period from 16 September to 31 October, 12,353 University students registered for the programme and of these 77.9% provided at least one saliva sample.
- 1,593 staff and contractors registered and 85.1% provided at least one sample.
- The percentage of results that were reported to participants within 24 hours of receipt in the laboratory was 97%, and 95% were reported within 12 hours.
- The OptiGene Direct RT-LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) saliva test used by this programme was found to have a specificity (the ability to correctly detect those without the virus) of 100%, meaning those who tested positive and were instructed to self-isolate could be confident that their result was correct.
- Alongside our programme, a collaboration for NHS Test and Trace across nine NHS trusts and university partners including Southampton found that the sensitivity of the test (the ability to correctly detect those with the virus) was 79%, rising to 94% in samples with high levels of the virus. This means that the test is effective in identifying the cases who are infectious and are most likely to transmit the disease.
You can read more about the saliva test on this dedicated Southampton City Council webpage.
