Purdue reduces surveillance testing, wary of increase in Tippecanoe County rates

Purdue University has announced that it will be reducing its COVID-19 Surveillance testing.

This reduction in random COVID-19 tests will likely increase Tippecanoe Counties' positivity rate.

Surveillance testing.

News 18's meredith hackler joins us now live from the universities campus to tell us how this could affect the counties positivity rate.

Meredith?

Purdue university does two type of covid-19 testing diagnostic which is where they test people who have been exposed to covid-19 or they have symptoms..

The other type of testing they do is surveillance testing which consist of them testing random people campus wide.

About 1/3 of the test the university does are of people who have symptoms or have been exposed to covid-19.

The other two thirds of the testing they do is random or surveillance.

The random test were given to around 4- thousand faculty, staff and students every week.

The university is pausing the randomized testing to make additional daily testing capacity available to all students and employees in anticipation of the need for end-of- semester and holiday departure tests.

However..

This decrease in random tests will likely result in an increase of reported covid-19 percentage positivity rate at the university and in tippecanoe county.

Here is why.

The determination of the 7 day positive is total positive tests divided by total test administered.

Broecker says when you take out 4- thousand tests weekly from the equation it's automatically going to raise the positivity rate in a community.

The university plans to wind down surveillance testing next week.

They will pick it back up in january when students return.

University officials say they have been in contact with city leaders so they aren't alarmed when the positivity rate increase.

Live on purdue campus meredith hackler news 18.

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