Broome County Schools Decide Whether to Continue COVID Testing
While parts of Broome County were under the Yellow Zone regulations as a coronavirus micro-cluster area, schools were required to test 20 percent of students and staff in order to be able to remain open for in-class instruction. Broome County Executive Garnar says he doesn’t know if that level of monitoring will continue now that the county has been removed from the Yellow Zone designation.
Garnar says the continued higher level of testing in public schools will be up to the districts, but, he says, it’s expensive. Garnar says the number of children and staff testing positive over the weeks Broome was in the Yellow Zone was very low, well below the positivity rates for the surrounding communities.
Likewise, Binghamton University, which switched to all remote learning November 18 after reaching the threshold of 100 positive tests during a two-week period, has been showing infection rates below Broome County’s average.
B.U. officials have attributed the higher positive tests as a result of the State University of New York requiring every student in the system to be tested for COVID-19 prior to the Thanksgiving break.