Pierce County Health Posts Update On School Testing Pilot

GIG HARBOR, WA — Over the month of December, three Pierce County School districts took part in a COVID-19 testing pilot program which, if successful, could be the key to safely bringing more students across the state back into the classroom. Now, the Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department has released the early results of that testing program, and say they're pretty promising.

The three participating districts were Peninsula, White River and Eatonville School Districts. During the pilot, each district had every willing student and staff member take a weekly rapid antigen COVID-19 test. Like standard tests, rapid antigen tests are performed via nasal swab, but they deliver their results in 15 minutes and have a 98.5 percent accuracy rate on negative tests.

If anyone tested positive, that student or staff member was then take a more traditional PCR test to confirm the positive result. If that second test came back positive, they were then asked to self-isolate, and close contacts were placed under quarantine.

Participation in the program was entirely voluntary, so some districts had more thorough results than others. For example, just 18.60 percent of Peninsula School district students and staff agreed to take part in the testing pilot, compared to 78.80 percent of White River district.

After four weeks of testing, the pilot wrapped at the end of 2020. Now, the Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department is taking a closer look at the results, and how they might be applied across the county and state.

Here's a look at some of their key findings:

• 4,063 people agreed to take part in the pilot, including 2,641 students, 1,372 staff members and 50 other adults.
• Those 4,063 people took a combined 9,827 antigen tests, 29 of which came back positive.
• 28 of the 29 who tested positive agreed to take the PCR follow-up test. Of those tests, just 19 were confirmed positive.
• Crunching the numbers, that means that only one out of every 491 tests came back truly positive, a positivity rate of 0.20 percent.

The health department says that 0.20 percent positive rate is especially noteworthy, considering that during much of the testing pilot the county was seeing explosive growth in COVID-19 cases. A summary of the pilot's findings also cite a participant survey which found that most did not mind the testing process, and that it was largely viewed as "convenient, quick, and easy."

Health leaders say, that's all good news for the future.

“Our pilot testing program gave us hope that we can bring students back for in-person learning while protecting health and safety and controlling community spread. The results give us confidence that the guidelines Department of Health set last month are valid,” said TPCHD Director of Health Anthony L-T Chen. “We will continue to work with all districts in the county as they safely bring students back to classrooms.”

Now that the pilot is over all three participating districts have elected to continue testing students and staff, in their own way. Eatonville is offering weekly PCR tests to staff and students 16 and older. Peninsula is planning weekly antigen tests, but only for high-risk staff and students. Finally, White River will be using rapid antigen tests for a back-to-school event.

TPCHD is hoping the program will also inspire other districts to consider frequent testing. The health department offers free testing kits to schools and other community partners, and hope that districts will take them up on their offer.

The health department has published an end of year summary with the preliminary findings from the pilot program, but will continue to comb through the data and release a more comprehensive look at the results in February.