On-Campus Testing Succeeds in Stemming COVID-19 Cases –– Except for One of Mistaken Identity

Steven Orlofsky ’22

The College is using MacCracken dormitory to isolate and quarantine students, when appropriate. Photo courtesy of Sarah Lawrence College

On October 22, following Sarah Lawrence’s weekly round of COVID-19 testing, a first-year student was incorrectly identified by a peer as having come into contact with someone who had tested positive for the virus.

“This was a mix up with the only other person on campus who shares my first name,” said the student, who will be referred to as Valerie Adams in order to protect the privacy of the student who tested positive who shares the same first name.

Before the mishap was resolved, Adams was briefly sent into on-campus quarantine. 

At the start of the fall semester, students across the country returned to schools and academic institutions that promised to implement new and stringent safety policies to combat the spread of COVID-19. Despite all this, many families remained wary of participating in long-distance travel, living in communal dorms and whether or not college students could resist the temptation to break social distancing rules and party after months of not interacting with anyone outside their household.

Sarah Lawrence’s system of weekly on-campus testing and enforced isolation for those who test positive has so far managed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on campus, says Director of Medical Services for Health and Wellness Mary Hartnett. Enforcing this semester's strict rules regarding isolation and interaction within what she calls “hubs” has been a challenge, Hartnett admitted.

“We are people who like to be with people,” she said. But so far, she added, “It's working for us.”

Health and Wellness achieved this using what’s known as surveillance testing, which requires all students, staff and faculty who are on campus to be tested every week, in order to detect and act upon new COVID-19 cases as early as possible.

The most recent test results, released on Monday, revealed that among the over two hundred students, faculty and staff who underwent a COVID-19 test, only one faculty or staff member came back positive, an improvement on the semester’s high point of three positive tests, during the week of October 26. Complete testing data is available on the school’s official COVID-19 Dashboard.

While the school follows a strict policy of immediately isolating any student who tests positive –– and quarantining any student who has had contact with that person –– the system does not always work the way it was intended to. Such was Adams’ case, one of mistaken identity that wasn’t able to be prevented by current protocols and rules.

The Sarah Lawrence Health and Wellness team helps administer COVID-19 testing on campus, but the ultimate jurisdiction on who must be isolated or quarantined –– and for how long –– is up to the Westchester County Department of Health.

A student who tested positive had recently come into contact with the other Valerie. Since they did not know her last name, a nurse they were talking to noticed Valerie Adams’ name lying on top of a pile of negative test results, and suggested her name to the student, who assumed she was actually the other Valerie, and listed her as possibly infected.

Adams was contacted and told to enter quarantine immediately, despite her claim that she had just tested negative and only interacted with her suitemates, who had also tested negative.

“My concerns were brushed off more or less completely,” she said, and was left no choice but to follow the instruction to quarantine for two weeks in MacCracken.

After packing all the belongings she would need for the next two weeks into some “seriously bulky bags,” she left her Hill House apartment to enter quarantine.

Due to safety concerns, transportation via van was not offered by the school. Instead, Adams carried her bags all the way from Hill House to outside MacCracken, about a fifteen minute walk away, where she would be quarantined. This was an activity she found “incredibly difficult,” as she was not offered any assistance or advice by the school. 

Soon, however, Health & Wellness realized their mistake. A few hours after she moved into her new room in MacCracken, Adams received a call from a “very sheepish” Health & Wellness official who informed her of the mix-up, and allowed her to leave quarantine that evening. Adams began moving her bags back to Hill House, which “did feel a bit like adding insult to injury,” she said.

According to Adams, the only reason the mistake was caught was that the other Valerie contacted Health and Wellness after she had learned someone she had come into contact with had tested positive for COVID-19.

“I'm so grateful to her for being so responsible and proactive because if she hadn't made that call, I might have had to spend days–or even the full two weeks–in quarantine,” said Adams, who was also upset at the possibility that if the other Valerie had not been proactive, someone who tested positive for COVID-19 would have been walking around campus and interacting with numerous people.

Adams felt that at first, the Health and Wellness employees and school administration officials she interacted with hadn’t listened to her, despite her advocating from the very beginning about what had likely gone wrong. 

“I wish I could have given permission for my ID photo to be shown to the person claiming to have interacted with me,” Adams said. She wanted every student on campus to be aware of this detail, an almost foolproof way to prevent a mix-up like hers from happening again.

Harnett could not comment on the specifics of this case due to medical privacy policies, but stressed that it is primarily the Westchester County Department of Health that determines who goes into isolation or quarantine.

The Barbara Walters Campus Center, once bustling, has been quite this semester, as students remain vigilant about virus precautions. Photo courtesy of Sophia Cutrubus ’22

Testing is an important tool, but it comes with limitations and nuances, which may sometimes conflict with extenuating circumstances and additional information. Sometimes students with COVID-like symptoms who recently tested negative will be put into isolation as an early precaution while they await another test.

“The person who's positive provides the Department of Health, and us, as we are assisting the department of health, with names,” Hartnett said. “We don't go around campus, picking people. We work off of information we're given.”

While the Westchester Department of Health and Sarah Lawrence Administration have been working tirelessly to prevent an outbreak, the endeavor is ultimately a group effort.

“The staff and faculty have done a great job,” Hartnett added. “This is not done alone. It's done as a team to put into place all sorts of efforts to mitigate the spread.” She pointed to a recent article in National Geographic Magazine on the success of Sarah Lawrence’s testing efforts and the low recent test results as proof of the efficacy of safety precautions, like surveillance testing and enforced isolation.

“Our goal is to make sure that anybody who potentially was exposed to the virus goes into quarantine so that they don't continue to spread the virus,” Hartnett said, and encouraged all students and faculty to continue wearing masks and observing social distancing.

Despite everything that’s happened to her, Adams is grateful to Health & Wellness and the school administration for acting with her safety and the safety of peers in mind, and hopes this event will prompt them to examine ways in which events like these can be avoided in the future.

“No one could have expected this to happen, after all,” she said. “At least it makes for a good story.”