ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Mich. – In the St. Clair High School community room, Assistant Principal Sandy Rutledge can be found administering COVID-19 antigen tests every day of the week. Rutledge, equipped with a medical gown, mask and face shield, stands behind a barrier of desks in order to test the school’s student-athletes.
The testing is a result of a program set in place last month by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called MI Safer Sports Testing, which states students between the ages of 13 and 19 must be tested for the coronavirus weekly to participate in their sport or extracurricular activities, like theater. The testing protocol started April 2, which gave schools and clubs around two weeks to plan.
“We have around 230 athletes in the spring season, which you know is a big season,” Rutledge said. “It’s a rapid test and it really is a fairly simple process, but you have to follow the procedures and wear the personal protective equipment and things, because unfortunately, we can have a positive test.”
At the high school, Rutledge said that most of the testing is done by the school nurse, Karrie Mackie. He said the school is looking into options of having the spring coaches become certified to administer the tests, which would allow himself and Mackie more breathing room.
“I think what will happen is our coaches will help with the testing process,” Rutledge said. “We’ll get them all certified to do that and make it easier.”
The tests given to student-athletes at St. Clair High School and in other schools around the state are shorter, and the process of testing is different from the standard long swabs usually associated with COVID-19 testing.
With the new tests, “You give the players the swab and they basically swirl around their nose, inside of each nostril like five times,” Rutledge said. “Then you have this little cardboard card with holes in it and you put five drops of solution in there and then you put the swab in it. You close it and you wait for 15 minutes and the lines either appear or they don’t appear.”
Dr. Eugene Wu, a professor of biology and biochemistry at the University of Richmond, said over email that the long cotton swabs, scientifically known as RT-PCR tests, and antigen tests have many key differences.
First, Wu said that because of how deep the long swabs enter the nostril, the swab is able to pick up more spike proteins. These proteins are used to produce a detectable signal for COVID-19.
RT-PCR tests are also followed with a purification step that removes contaminants and decreases the likelihood of false positives, Wu said.
The main difference between the rapid antigen tests and RT-PCR tests is the speed at which the results are generated, Wu said. Rapid antigen tests can be generated within half an hour or sooner, whereas RT-PCR tests take at least a day to generate results.
With the fast turnaround using rapid antigen tests, schools are able to let their students participate in sports and extracurricular activities in a safe manner. St. Clair High School, along with other schools in the state, have a large number of students participating in activities for the spring, causing them to rely on their intermediate school districts to obtain the rapid antigen tests.
Elena Cousino
Diagram detailing the route that COVID-19 rapid antigen tests take to get to student-athletes in schools.Deana Tuczek, the director of special education at St. Clair County Regional Educational Service Agency, took the lead on antigen testing in the St. Clair County School District. She said they worked with the St. Clair County Health Department to get started with antigen testing in the buildings.
Along with giving guidance to the service agency, the health department helped them apply for a waiver to allow staff to administer tests and other information regarding the rapid antigen tests, Dr. Annette Mercatante, a medical health officer for the St. Clair County Health Department, said in a statement emailed by the health department’s spokesperson.
The waiver, known as CLIA or the Federal Certification for Clinical Laboratory, is sent through the state government to allow building staff to use the antigen tests in their facilities.
Once the waivers were filled, the individual schools would submit a registration form through the state of Michigan detailing information about the school and the number of students they need to test. These forms enroll the school into the program and allow the intermediate school districts to begin taking orders and receiving antigen test kits from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
The intermediate school district will then receive two weeks worth of tests for each school, and someone from the school or school district will need to come pick them up. Tuczek said it is usually either the assistant superintendent of the district or the school’s athletic director.
The state is sending out three different antigen tests through the program: BinaxNow, CareStart and BD Veritor. St. Clair County has been receiving BinaxNOW tests, which are manufactured by a company named Abbott. Its headquarters is located in North Chicago, Illinois, but they have locations throughout the United States and around the world.
While there are no rules about what days of the week schools need to test their students, Tuczek said most schools prefer to test on Mondays.
“A lot of them are going to test on Monday because if you get a positive, your contract tracing is two days before,” Tuczek said. “If they test during the middle of the week and you have people that come in contact with the positive case two days before, they have to be quarantined.”
Colin Zimmer, a senior on the varsity lacrosse team at St. Clair High School, said getting tested is not a problem, but quarantining during the season would be frustrating.
“Being a senior, I want to play as much as possible and if I were to have to quarantine, I would essentially miss four to five games, which is almost half of our season due to an adjusted schedule,” Zimmer said over email.
According to the CDC, when coming in contact individuals need to quarantine for 14 days after exposure. By testing on Mondays, this will allow students and their teams to not have to fully quarantine and miss out on games or practices.
However, Rutledge said for St. Clair High School, testing all of the students on one day is not a possibility.
“What we’ll probably do is test track on Tuesday, test softball on Wednesday and test baseball on Thursday,” Rutledge said. “I don’t think we’ll do all 200 on the same day.”
With the introduction of antigen testing and the East China School District transitioning online, the district only had two cases between March 28 to April 10, according to the record found on their website.
With the thumb of Michigan having over 100 COVID-19 cases per day, according to the New York Times on April 8, the program is set in place to allow students the opportunity to play sports in a safe manner.
“We’ve been very lucky,” Rutledge said. “I mean our kids have been in school all year and we’ve had really relatively small numbers of cases. Although it’s been spiking lately, which is why we went to virtual, but for the most part, I think our kids are following the rules.”