Twice-a-week COVID-19 mitigation testing for students living on campus began last week. Some students began to schedule appointments for mitigation testing but noticed there were no longer open spaces at testing sites, such as the IU Auditorium and Cramer Marching Hundred Hall.
IU officials said there are enough testing slots available for everyone who needs to be tested, but if you wait until late in the week to schedule your mitigation test, you might not see any available appointments.
IU Spokesperson Chuck Carney said the Bloomington campus tested about 38,000 people and granted about 12,000 exemptions last week. The university’s goal is to test 50,000 students per week at all IU campuses overall. IU Director of Mitigation Testing Dr. Aaron Carroll said IU has the capacity to do so, and that invitations were sent out for more than 50,000 tests last week.
He said testing slots did not begin to run out until Friday afternoon. Even if a student does not see available slots at one location, General Manager of Event Services Mike Santa said, sometimes there are still plenty available at another site. The IU Auditorium doesn’t have as many appointments as the Cramer Marching Hundred Hall because the auditorium is a smaller space and can’t hold as many people, he said.
Carroll said the number of slots available is dependent on the number of tests that can safely be collected each day — not how many tests can be run in total. Testing gets most full when students wait until later in the week to schedule tests. There are more than enough slots to accommodate everyone most of the week, Carroll said, but on days like Fridays, slots begin to diminish.
He said the same is true for voluntary testing.
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IU students are not supposed to walk into mitigation testing to be tested without first scheduling an appointment, said Kirk White, IU assistant vice president and temporary co-chair of the IU-Bloomington COVID Response Unit.
“What we don’t want are a bunch of people standing in line at the testing sites because all that does is add to the risk of spreading infection,” White said.
If students miss an appointment for a schedule conflict, they are encouraged to reschedule. However, accommodations can be made if the student comes a bit early or late to the appointment, IU's General Manager of Events Mike Santa said.
Students should always check if there are available appointments on a different day or location, Santa said. If not, a student may request to be exempt from mitigation testing that week, but this cannot be used to simply abstain from testing because exemption requests are tracked and may be denied if slots are available.
