Could COVID-19 quarantine be shortened by testing? UK study tries to find out.
The University of Kentucky, along with the University of Tennessee, will begin taking multiple incremental nasal swab samples from students exposed to the coronavirus this week, in an effort to understand how long an exposed individual should remain in quarantine.
Could increased, periodic testing of those already in quarantine potentially shorten the duration of the nationally recommended 14-day quarantine? That’s the questions researchers are essentially trying to answer, said Dr. Robert DiPaola, the dean of UK’s College of Medicine.
UK students who are notified by university contact tracers that they have been exposed — within six feet of a COVID-19-positive individual for more than 15 minutes — will be asked if they want to join the research study. If a student volunteers, then testing staff will go to the students’ quarantine location and re-test the student with a nasal swab on days 3, 5, 7, 10 and 14 of quarantine, said Dr. Jill Kolesar, a professor in UK’s College of Pharmacy, who helped to put the study together.
“If you’re negative on day 3, 5, 7 or 10, will you still be negative on day 14?” Kolesar said. “If we can show that people are negative earlier on then we could potentially let them out of quarantine sooner.”
The study received institutional research board approval on Monday — a requirement for any experiment on human subjects — and 100 UK students will be in the first phase, slated to begin this week. Students who sign up for the study will not be able to get out of quarantine early. If all goes well, Kolesar said they hope to have results in a month.
Results from the study of quarantined students will be published and summary results could be passed on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist the federal agency in determining national guidance on quarantine.
“We’re hopeful that the data would be informative enough that it could be helpful in that way if that’s what (the CDC) wanted to do,” DiPaola said. UK officials said they’ve planning and “operationalizing” the study over the past few weeks.
The University of Tennessee will also be participating in the study, Tennessee officials said during a livestreamed campus update on Tuesday, the Knoxville News-Sentinel reported.
“If our study with the University of Kentucky and others elsewhere provide evidence that the positive cases that develop in individuals in quarantine are identified, for example, in the first seven days of quarantine, the CDC may reduce the recommended quarantine duration,” said Deborah Crawford, vice chancellor for research at Tennessee.
Results from the Knoxville, Tenn., campus will be sent back to UK, Kolesar said. They’re currently the only other site for the study.
Tennessee officials credited their involvement in the study in part to a visit from Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Taskforce Coordinator, who visited both campuses last week.
“This was a challenge actually Dr. Birx gave us ... needing more data points,” Chancellor Donde Plowman said, according to the News-Sentinel. “The original study that the 14-day guideline came from was a small number of people. And so she really encouraged us to work on this, so we are playing a role in revising that guidance.”