Temple to require testing for students in university housing

The university will ask any students who test positive for COVID-19 to return home or self-isolate in designated housing for at least 10 days.

Temple will test students living in university housing for COVID-19 at the Aramark STAR Complex. | JEREMY ELVAS / THE TEMPLE NEWS

Temple University will test all students living in on-campus housing for COVID-19 after they arrive on campus for the fall semester, wrote Mark Denys, the director of Student Health, in an email to students today.

Additionally, the university will test all students, including those in off-campus housing, faculty and staff who have traveled in the past two weeks from states with 90 or more cases per 100,000 residents reported in the past week, in line with guidelines from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. 

The university has asked all students to self-isolate for two weeks prior to arriving on campus, The Temple News reported.

Testing will take place in the Aramark STAR Complex, Denys wrote. The tests are free of charge for students in university housing. The university expects results to be available within 72 hours.

Students who test positive for COVID-19 will be asked to return home or self-isolate in designated university housing for at least 10 days, Denys wrote. Any student who refuses testing will be barred from accessing buildings on Main Campus.

The announcement comes just days before new students and returning undergraduates will begin moving in on Aug. 17. Classes begin on Aug. 24. 

Students moving in on Aug. 17 or later will be tested on the day they arrive. All students who moved in prior to then will be tested on Aug. 17, Denys wrote. If students move in after 4 p.m. on any given day, they will be tested the following day.

The testing requirement is in addition to Temple’s plan to test all symptomatic and some asymptomatic students, faculty and staff throughout the semester at the site of a former apparel store on Cecil B. Moore Avenue near Broad Street.

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