Adam Davila sat on the phone for three days trying to get a hold of Auburn’s Medical Clinic.
He received responses that they were on their lunch break or that they were off for the weekend, but he never received a response that they could help him get tested after his girlfriend tested positive for COVID-19.
Frustrated, Davila turned to Stopwatch Urgent Care for a test.
“I was just frustrated with the lack of access,” Davila said. “There’s no weekend hours in the middle of this pandemic, which seems kind of absurd. But I thought maybe I would call Monday and Tuesday but I didn’t get any answer.”
The testing clinic is open Saturday from 8 a.m. until noon though it doesn’t administer tests over the weekend. If you want to get a test, you only have two three-hour windows each day from Monday-Friday 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. An Auburn spokesperson said the clinic has as many as 47 people working the phones — the COVID Resource Center has up to six — though Davila isn’t alone in experiencing difficulties. Students worried they had the virus called and called to no avail.
Aggie Dalton, the mother of an Auburn student, even tried to get on the line when her child couldn’t get an answer. Her child was particularly concerned about getting tested because Dalton is a two-time cancer survivor who is at high risk for COVID-19 complications. Her child wanted to make sure it would be safe to visit home.
The trouble with testing didn’t just start once students arrived at Auburn. It goes back to when they were preparing to come back to campus. Students were told they could go get tested or sign up for an at-home test. Dalton’s student signed up for an at-home test but never received it.
Olivia Traylor, an undergraduate at Auburn, has heard from several friends that never received their tests in the mail, either. Traylor didn’t have to take a test because she had coronavirus back in March. However, since there wasn’t evidence that people couldn’t get it twice and now there are more and more cases of people who do, Loren Traylor, Olivia’s mother, said she really should have had to take a test.
Dalton’s student turned to East Alabama Medical Center after failing to get a test at Auburn. The hospital replied that it was no longer testing Auburn students. Dalton didn’t believe it, so she called herself and was told the same answer. An EAMC spokesperson said that the hospital does test Auburn students, but it “did ask that Auburn students use the Auburn University Medical Clinic as their primary testing site as we needed to keep some time slots available for the remainder of our service area.”
Dalton’s child drove 30 minutes to another city. After arriving 40 minutes after it opened, the student was told they were full and weren’t taking patients for the rest of the day. If there had been a test, it would have only counted towards Auburn’s numbers if the student chose to report it and the school validated it.
There’s been an influx of tens of thousands of students into Auburn, but everyone knew that was coming, Dalton said. The pandemic has been around since March, so they had months to prepare. Dalton has a child at another college, where she said she hasn’t heard of students having problems getting tested. And when they do, they get the results back the same day.
READ: Auburn parents, students say university COVID information’s ‘jumbled’ and insufficient
“Like what did (Auburn) think would happen when the college campuses opened?” Dalton said. “Did they not plan for this? I’m baffled. And frustrated.”
With tests so hard to come by, there could be thousands of students who have it but don’t get tested, Dalton said. If that happens, then how does any contact tracing get done?
To help with contact tracing, Auburn is using a health check system called GuideSafe, something that has “quickly become a part of life at Auburn” according to the university. However, it’s based on an honor code. Olivia Traylor said it takes her about six seconds to complete and not all the professors check to make sure it’s completed.
Miles Blanchet, a graduate student at Auburn, said that he’s not sure how effective the system is. While some people might analyze their health more carefully because of it, he thinks others will just look at it as a checklist they have to go through before getting to class.
When Steve McClinton first saw the system, he laughed. McClinton has two children at Auburn, and he thinks the check is just allowing the school a “false sense of security” because they’re doing something.
McClinton is the vice president of sales for X Labs, a company that has created an app for businesses and schools to use to check if people are safe to go into work or school. The app takes the honor system out of it, McClinton said, by using a selfie cam to make sure the person recording his or her temperature is the correct person, as well as through a number of other checks.
While Auburn doesn’t have to use his company’s specific app, McClinton wishes it would use something more than the easily ignored GuideSafe system. He knows firsthand that the technology is out there.
“I really thought — I really thought — that there was some big plan that they were doing,” McClinton said. “But when they showed me that app, I just laughed at it.”
Not only are people who might have symptoms going unnoticed, but many students who are waiting for test results are going out in public, Olivia Traylor said. Auburn University said it uses the Healthcheck daily screener app to make sure students don’t attend class or work or take the Tiger Transit. It did not say if it is taking action to make sure students are quarantining from social activities as well.
While Olivia Traylor and her family were not asymptomatic when they caught it, others might not show symptoms. Those who are waiting for tests or who tested positive but feel fine can still spread it if they are going out.
“That just defeats the purpose,” Olivia Traylor said.
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