Case Study: Successful COVID-19 Testing Program is Helping Keep Schools Open

Dr. Ed Campbell is a molecular virologist at Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine whose research focuses on molecular mechanisms of viral infection and inflammation. Recently, he has taken on a new role as founder of SafeGuard Surveillance, a company running COVID-19 surveillance testing for school districts in the suburban Chicago area.

As a member of his local board of education, Dr. Campbell began working with teachers and administrators in the school district last summer to develop a plan to reopen schools safely amid the coronavirus pandemic. With the goal of keeping his children and the other students in school in the upcoming school year, he came up with the idea to begin a COVID-19 surveillance program that would implement robust testing for both students and staff. The program is based on a reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) approach developed by colleagues David O’Conner and Shelby O’Conner at the University of Wisconsin ‒ Madison, and Sarah Sawyer at the University of Colorado. The RT-LAMP-based test uses saliva instead of a nasal swab to perform infection surveillance of populations such as schools. Campbell was able to quickly cobble together the best parts of their protocols to begin weekly testing of students prior to the schools in the district opening last fall.

Reliable, Accurate Tools Help Facilitate Testing

SafeGuard Surveillance has incorporated PLATEMASTER®, PIPETMAN® Pipettes, and PIPETMAN® DIAMOND Tips into their workflow.

PLATEMASTER is an easy-to-use tool for high-throughput manual pipetting of microplates that reduces errors and eliminates well-to-well and plate-to-plate variance.

“What we needed to do to scale up testing in order to engage all of the other school districts, was to be able to pipette at scale in a reliable way into 384-well PCR plates, which obviously is time consuming and needs to be accurate,” says Campbell. “We’ve been using the PLATEMASTER for a couple of weeks now and we couldn’t be happier with it. It’s visually reliable when you look at the movement of liquids, but more importantly, the results are the ones we’re looking for. We were using it the day we took it out of the box and have been using it ever since. The lab’s reaction to the PLATEMASTER was one of ecstatic joy because of the way it impacted our workload. We are very pleased with how fast we are able to process the samples.”

They have also found PIPETMAN pipettes to be accurate, reliable tools. “When we report a finding of potential clinical significance, which is how we describe a positive result in a surveillance test, it’s right almost all of the time. Even when it’s not, people doubt the diagnostic test because at this point, we have a reputation for reliability,” says Campbell.

As they ramped up their testing, the need for access to reliable pipette tips became critical. Working with Gilson, Dr. Campbell was able to determine how many tips were needed per week to support their testing efforts, which allowed Gilson to support their tip consumption demands.

As Campbell explains, “For every saliva sample, we have to move it at least twice in the process and we use three pipette tips per sample that we run, but we need those tips to be reliable and accessible. Gilson has been exceptional in the ability to deliver tips to keep us going. We’re testing right now because of that relationship,” says Campbell.

All of the people we identified as positive were subsequently confirmed by a diagnostic test, but the majority ofthem were asymptomatic when we identified them. They didn’t know they were sick. Removing those people not only from the school district, but also from other public places is important.

- Dr. Ed Campbell, Founder of SafeGuard Surveillance

A Successful Program Keeping Kids in School

Has the program been successful in keeping kids in school? According to Campbell, “Absolutely, and it’s prevented us from shutting down in a couple of instances. Getting a sense of the positivity rate is very valuable, as is pulling people we identify as positive from school. All of the people we identified as positive were subsequently confirmed by a diagnostic test, but the majority of them were asymptomatic when we identified them. They didn’t know they were sick. Removing those people not only from the school district, but also from other public places is important.”

Campbell also thinks the program can have a positive impact on the broader community. “I can’t prove that our local community has a lower positivity rate because of what we’re doing, but it does have a lower positivity rate than comparable suburbs around us that don’t have that testing, so I’d like to think that we’re making a difference,” he says.

SafeGuard Surveillance is currently running about 10,000 tests per week and they anticipate a higher number of tests in the new year as other schools in the Chicago area express interest in the program.