Pooled Testing In Medford, Somerville Schools Could Set Standard

MEDFORD, MA — Tufts University is partnering with its host communities Medford and Somerville to offer pooled coronavirus testing in public schools, a program that could serve as a model for how students and teachers are tested in other districts.

Tufts President Tony Monaco said the testing method is more efficient and cost-effective, allowing districts to test multiple students at once. Eight swabs will be packaged in a single tube and sent to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. If a pool comes back positive, everyone in the pool will be tested individually, enabling health officials to isolate cases.

"The program is less expensive than large-scale individual testing because it requires only a fraction of the analysis," Monaco said.

Testing will be less invasive than the typical "brain scraper" method of sticking a Q-tip far up the nostril. Kindergartners through eighth-graders will have the front part of their noses swabbed by a nurse or EMT, and high school students will administer the swabs themselves.

Medford has begun hybrid instruction for kindergarten through fourth grade and sixth grade, and plans to bring back fifth-graders next week. The district hopes to add seventh and eighth grade by mid-November and high-schoolers sometime after that. Tufts has offered weekly testing to Medford teachers as they start hybrid classes, administering about 1,200 tests so far this year.

"[Testing] has relieved a lot of anxiety and stress," Medford Superintendent Marice Edouard-Vincent said.

Officials said they expect about 3,900 students and staff in Medford to need tests once the program fully starts.

Somerville, meanwhile, plans to start phasing in hybrid learning in early December. Superintendent Mary Skipper said regular testing of students and staff is the "last piece of the puzzle" for successfully opening schools, given the density of Somerville and its surrounding communities. She estimated about 1,500 people will need to be tested regularly at the start of reopening.

The university is splitting the cost of testing with the cities. Officials hope this model could be replicated in other school districts but pointed out disparities in access to resources.

"This is just a plan for two communities, but our entire region and Commonwealth really shares this need," Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said. "In a sense, Medford and Somerville won the lottery by having a leading university and a leader like President Monaco and our own dedicated and skilled staff working tirelessly to get us the basic tools needed to slow the spread. But it really shouldn't be that way."

While Tufts's plan to bring students back to campus initially set off alarm bells among officials in Medford and Somerville, Mayors Breanna Lungo-Koehn and Curtatone said Thursday they were impressed with the university's rigorous testing program and grateful for its community outreach.

"We both offered concerns, but President Monaco worked with us to address the concerns," Curtatone said. "By all accounts it's been successful, and the lessons learned will help in this collaboration."

Lungo-Koehn added, "Tufts has been able to do what is needed to not only keep Tufts safe, but they've also been able to keep Somerville and Medford safe."

The pooled testing program could start as early as January.