Mount Holyoke News AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1917 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2020
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Students mistakenly receive positive COVID-19 test results BY KATIE GOSS ’23 STAFF WRITER
On Oct. 20, Karen Engell, director of Health Services, and Paul S. Kandel, Strategic IT Project Management Lead and COVID-19 Testing and Tracing Project Manager, sent a message to the Mount Holyoke community about two falsely reported COVID-19 tests. Both students involved were told they had tested positive, but had in actuality tested negative for COVID-19. The mistake was made between Oct. 16 and Oct. 17, and the corrected reports of these two tests were issued within 12 hours of the false reports being sent out. Overall, there were nine other false reports of COVID-19 tests out of 154,000 tests issued within these two days. Elsewhere, three people were told they tested negative when they actually tested positive, and there were four cases at an additional location reporting that four people tested either inconclusive when they really tested negative or vice versa. The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard processes the COVID-19 tests for the College, as well as for other institutions in the Northeast. After a test is administered, it is placed in a tube and labeled with a barcode. When it arrives at the Broad Institute, that barcode is scanned multiple times throughout the process of being tested to make sure it can be tracked efficiently. The two misreported tests were due to human error and are considered “extremely rare,” according to the statement sent out by the College. “It was a reporting mistake. The corrected results are accurate, and we would not anticipate that anyone would need to be retested as a result,” said David Cameron, director of communications and media Relations at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Tina Arechiga ’23 was one of the students affected by this reporting mistake. She received a call from the College informing her that her last test came back positive and was asked to relocate into an apartment on campus used for students who test positive for the virus.
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“I was really anxious and scared when I got the call, just because I’ve been really careful. I don’t go out a lot, and I only hang out with one person here on campus,” Arechiga said. “When the lady [from the Health Center] was going through the steps of what I had to do [for quarantine], I sort of got really nervous and felt a pit in my stomach.” Right after Arechiga had been relocated to the apartment designated for quarantine, she received an email stating that her results had come back negative, not positive. “I called the lady [at the Health Center], and she checked the website where they have the results and it had changed somehow. I was confused, and when she said it had also changed for the other person as well, I was like, ‘Well, what’s going on?’” Arechiga said. “So she just asked me to stay in the apartment until they could run the test again.” After it was confirmed that there had been a reporting mistake from the Broad Institute, and that Arechiga and the other student had actually tested negative, they were free to leave the quarantine apartment and return to their dorms. Overall, according to Arechiga, she had only been displaced for four or five hours. Although the tests only experienced a scanning error and not an actual testing error, it has still set some doubt in test results going forward for some students. “I felt surprised when I saw that there had been reporting issues with our testing system. I had trusted the reliability of the test [results] so I hadn’t even thought about if the [results] were unreliable before,” Emily Jones ’23 said. “Now I do have worries about future test results. I feel that I won’t be able to look at test results as being as reliable as I had previously thought.” Additionally, Jones mentioned the concern that the email sent out to all community members on this issue may not have been seen by everyone. “The email’s subject didn’t directly convey the issue of misreported tests so I worry that some students may have not seen the email because it was not labeled as
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Photo by Lily Reavis ’21 The Broad Institute recently misrepresented two COVID-19 tests from the Mount Holyoke testing site.
College releases its initial plans for the spring semester BY CASEY ROEPKE ’21 NEWS EDITOR
President of the College Sonya Stephens wrote a letter to the Mount Holyoke community regarding the College’s preliminary plan for the spring 2021 term on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Stephens wrote that the College is preparing to welcome up to 60 percent of the student population to campus in the spring. “Our goal is to safely accommodate as many students wishing to return as we possibly can, and to continue to ensure that those for whom Mount Holyoke is their permanent address or who need to be on campus can remain in residence,” Stephens said in the letter. Campus life for spring residents will resemble that of the limited number of students currently on campus this fall. Residential students will have required access to COVID-19 testing twice a week. The Dining Commons will continue to offer takeout-only meals, and students will not be allowed to host visitors or travel more than a limited distance
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from campus. Students will also likely be responsible for following a social compact, potentially the one currently in place. Students who plan to live on campus in the spring semester will need to fill out a residential intent form distributed by the Office of Residential Life. If more than 60 percent of students indicate a desire to live on campus, ResLife will “put in place a prioritized application process.” The deadline for the form is Nov. 8. Classes will continue to operate under the Flexible Immersive Teaching model, and faculty will make individual decisions as to whether they will hold hybrid or fully virtual courses. Stephens’ statement included an announcement that all spring 2021 study abroad programs through the College will be canceled, “given the continued challenges of travel and COVID-19.” There were no details regarding student employment or athletics for the CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
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