Bunting Hall’s parking lot will soon be seeing more activity.
Colorado Mesa University’s (CMU) drive-through COVID-19 testing site has been inactive for a few months, but will reopen on Oct. 6.
“We initially made this as a walk-up site,” chair of the Safe Together, Strong Together program Dr. Amy Bronson said of the current drive-through. “To increase efficiency and ensure that we can get everyone through that needs to be tested from the greater community, we decided to continue to be a good community partner and make sure that we opened up and made that accessible.”
More community members than students use CMU’s testing sites. So far, the university has seen a 65/35 percent split between community membersand student use.
The current testing site is seeing similar numbers to other testing places in Grand Junction, with 320 people per day being tested on average.
Mesa County has seen their average cases per day steadily climb from the end of August to the end of September, from the mid 30s to the high 70s and 80s, according to Mesa County Public Health.
“We need to be honest and transparent about the fact that the numbers in the community have in fact increased,” CMU President John Marshall said during a CMU Live Facebook stream on Sept. 23. “One of the challenges that’s presented is testing.”
CMU currently has a walk-up testing site next to the Student Wellness Center that will remain operational as the drive-through is implemented.
“The reality is, it’s been harder and harder for students to access,” Marshall said of the walk-up testing center during the livestream.
They found that community members would take many appointments, which in part helped lead to an increase in testing sites and appointments.
The two testing sites offer different COVID-19 tests and have a few different ways they operate.
The walk-up testing site offers rapid tests with a turnaround of under an hour, and is only available to the CMU campus community, like faculty and students.
The drive-through offers nasal swab PCR tests that take a few days to come back. This testing site is available to both the campus community and the broader Grand Junction audience.
A rapid test, also known as an antigen test, detects COVID-19 protein fragments from the swab.
A PCR test, which stands for polymerase chain reaction test, detects genetic material specific to the virus, and is generally more sensitive. They are both swab tests.
The drive-through site has help in their operations from CMU’s testing partner COVIDCheck Colorado.
Both testing sites will be open for the foreseeable future. They are operational Monday through Friday starting at 8 a.m., although the walk-up closes at noon and the drive-through closes at 4 p.m. The drive-through is also open on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon.
“I think as we continue to learn more about COVID and our response, this is how we are navigating that and trying to be responsive to not only campus but community needs,” Dr. Bronson said.
