COVID update: Cases remain low as university loses campus testing provider

There is currently one student in isolation and six students in quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19.

“We had several cleared out fairly recently,” executive director of risk management Matt Moustakas said. “We are not as busy as we were with contact tracing, but it has been pretty level for a while.”

COVID-19 tests are no longer being provided on campus due to the lack of business the test providers were receiving. There are still other options to get a test, such as gogettested.com, or students can call Student Health Services, Moustakas said.

“This company wasn’t getting enough business anymore anywhere, and so they have stopped all of their remote testing,” Moustakas said. “With the vaccine, people are more interested in that than getting tested at this point, so there is just not as much demand as there was before the vaccines were rolling out.”

Texas Woman’s University still has approximately 400 doses left of the vaccine to be administered. Many of those spots are taken, but there are still some spots available to be able to get the vaccine, university spokesperson Matt Flores said.

“We are encouraging people to not wait for TWU and to go get it elsewhere,” Moustakas said. “If you got a car, [you can go to] Texas Motor Speedway. My wife volunteered there, and it is a great operation.”

TWU is planning on having in-person classes for the fall of 2021, with classes being more densely packed. There may possibly still be requirements for face coverings, Moustakas said, but the university may allow events where people outside of TWU are able to participate. 

“The default assumption for fall is that we are planning as if things are going to be mostly back to normal,” Moustakas said. “We are going to follow public health guidance at that time. So, let’s say around late June or July, we should have a good idea of what that looks like, and hopefully it will match up with that assumption.”

TWU is currently not planning on making the COVID-19 vaccine a requirement to attend the university, Moustakas said.

“The governor came out with an executive order saying that no state agencies are allowed to require or make it mandatory for vaccines,” Moustakas said. “So that takes care of that decision, not that we were necessarily thinking we were going to do that anyway.”

Laura Pearson can be reached via email at lpearson6@twu.edu.