How Can My School or Business Get Tested With St. Jude Labs?
With the omicron variant of COVID-19 still spreading across the country at an alarming rate, COVID-19 testing remains a vital line of defense in our fight to slow the virus’s spread. While it is simple enough for a single individual to schedule an appointment for COVID-19 testing, scheduling testing for an entire school or place of business is often much more of a logistical challenge.
At St. Jude Labs, we are steadfast in our mission to make swift and accurate COVID-19 testing as accessible as possible – and a big part of that mission is partnering with schools and businesses throughout the state of Maryland and beyond to provide mass COVID-19 testing services. In this article, we’ll explore everything you need to know about scheduling COVID-19 testing for your school or business with St. Jude Labs, including how our on-location COVID-19 testing service works and how to decide if this option is the right choice for your institution.
Should my School or Business get Tested for COVID-19?
In an article published by NPR detailing how schools across the country are using weekly testing to keep students and teachers alike safe in the classroom, Becky Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign is quoted saying, “Every school that can manage it should consider testing students weekly — even twice a week, if possible.”
Providing weekly testing to students is by far the most effective way to prevent a school from becoming a spreading ground for a COVID-19 outbreak – and the same holds true for places of business as well. While there’s no denying that scheduling weekly testing for a school or business is both an expense and a hassle, having to shut down operations due to a COVID-19 outbreak is a much more serious expense and hassle – and, far more importantly, something that could end up costing lives. With that said, regular COVID-19 testing is certainly something that every school and business should consider until the pandemic is over.
How to Schedule COVID-19 Testing With St. Jude Labs for Your School or Business
While we at St. Jude Labs allow anyone to visit our Columbia, MD location for rapid and accurate COVID-19 testing, we understand that loading all of your students or employees onto a bus for a weekly COVID-19 testing road trip is simply not a feasible option for most schools and businesses. To solve this problem, we are proud to offer a service that entails sending our staff of knowledgeable and compassionate nurses to over 100 schools and businesses across the country to collect COVID-19 testing samples on-location using a high-quality oropharyngeal collection kit.
Once collected, these samples are then shipped straight to our industry-leading lab for analysis. Schools and businesses in the state of Maryland will receive results for their tests the very same day that they are collected, while schools and businesses in other states will receive results within 24 hours of receiving the samples.
To make this service as convenient and accessible as possible, we also offer an easy-to-use web portal for accessing testing results as well as pre-built parental consent forms that schools can provide to the parents of students being tested. Best of all, our on-location COVID-19 testing services often come at no charge to the institution being tested thanks to the Federal CARES act which covers COVID-19 testing for schools and places of business. In the rare instances where testing is not covered by insurance, we offer cash options as well. While we all long for the day when concerns about COVID-19 are a worry of the past, the best we can do right now is play the hand we’ve been dealt and do everything possible to keep ourselves and others safe. Scheduling routine testing for your school or place of business provides peace of mind that nothing else can match during these challenging times. To learn more about how to schedule routine, on-location COVID-19 testing for your employees or students with the medical testing experts at St. Jude Labs, be sure to contact us today.
