USC Student Health begins campus-wide COVID-19 testing with Color

University of Southern California Student Health announces that it will expand COVID-19 testing as part of its overall testing strategy to help keep students, faculty and staff safe on its campuses. 

Beginning in August, the university will begin ramping up to a minimum of 500 tests per day for students and on-site faculty and staff. The university will set up three observed sample collection sites, and the program will eventually transition to an unobserved self-collection model, further increasing access to fast, convenient and efficient surveillance testing.

“By increasing our testing capacity, we will be able to more quickly capture and contain sources of infection,” said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, Chief Health Officer of USC Student Health. “Partnering with Color will expand our knowledge of prevalence and detection of asymptomatic cases at USC, so that we may make better-informed healthcare decisions.”

The program is being operated through Color’s technology and testing infrastructure, including software to manage risk screening, onsite and distributed testing logistics, processing of samples, and results delivery. Color’s approach integrates software and infrastructure with high-throughput, automated lab capacity in order to improve access to COVID testing for large populations. 

“USC is at the forefront of implementing a responsible, evidence-based program to optimize a safe campus.” said Color CEO Othman Laraki. “Convenient and regular surveillance testing with rapid turnaround times can significantly reduce the risk of a campus outbreak.”

The population surveillance testing program, named “Pop Testing” for short, is scheduled to begin in August, 2020, with current summer campus constituents, and expand to the larger campus populations throughout the fall semester.

For more information about Color and its response to COVID-19, including Universities, visit www.color.com/covid-contact

About USC Student Health

USC Student Health, part of Keck Medicine of USC, is a comprehensive source for primary care, counseling and mental health services, preventive health services and health promotion for all USC students on two campuses. Accredited by the Association for Ambulatory Health Care, Inc., all providers are fully accredited faculty of the academic medicine departments of Keck School of Medicine of USC.

 About Color

Color is a leader in distributed healthcare and clinical testing. Color makes population-scale healthcare programs accessible, convenient, and cost-effective for everyone. Color works with health systems, employers, and national health initiatives around the world including the million-person All of Us Research Program by the National Institutes of Health. For more information about Color and its response to COVID-19, visit www.color.com/covid-contact.