The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently completed its in-person fall semester. And as the nation watches the COVID-19 virus surge, the school continues the virus testing program that has worked so well since it began in August. 

The COVID-19 positivity rate for the entire student body and faculty for the past seven days was 0.45 percent. The number of total tests given since the inception of the program? A staggering 908,158. But it’s that rate of testing and contact tracing that reduced the positivity rate from a high of nearly 3 percent in late August to what it is now.  

All of the 49,000 students, 2,800 faculty and 8,000 staff are tested at least once weekly using saliva tests, which have proven to produce fewer false positives and fewer false negatives than the swab tests. The saliva test entails the subject “drooling” into a vial.  

“We started the week before classes began on August 24,” Brian Brauer, EMS coordinator at the University of Illinois, wrote in an email. “It was our 'soft' opening for the program." The following week, because of off-campus activities, the positivity rate spiked to 2.86 percent. A week later, with testing and contact tracing, officials had the rate down to 1 percent.  

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