Lehigh announced in a Friday email to the campus community that fully remote students will be included in the university’s COVID-19 surveillance testing.
The decision to include fully remote students in surveillance testing is a change from Lehigh’s previous policy. Only non-remote students had to get tested twice through surveillance testing during the first two weeks of the semester. Since that time, only students with symptoms — both fully remote and non-remote — could get tested through the Health Center.
But that changed last week, when Lehigh announced it would restart surveillance testing for non-remote students, citing rising cases in the region. The school will test five to 10 percent of the student population, which began Sept. 28 and will last until November.
Now, fully remote students will be included in the school’s surveillance testing for the first time.
The decision comes at the end of a week in which the school announced its first two on-campus COVID-19 cases, saw a sharp rise in students in quarantine and isolation and shut down all university athletics practices and trainings for an indefinite period of time.
Fully remote students are asked to update their contact information so the university knows whether or not that student is in the Bethlehem area and able to get tested on-campus.
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