The Erie County Health Department on Tuesday agreed to let schools use its lab license for Covid-19 testing – three weeks after many schools learned they would need to test students and staff if they wanted to stay open.
School officials say that at this point, most have already figured out another way to order the tests from the state and move forward.
“It’s nice that it’s happening, but all of us have already been working on this,” Frontier Superintendent Richard Hughes said. “If this were available at the beginning, it would have been welcome.”
His district – located in Hamburg, with one of the highest positivity rates in the state – will contract with an organization that has a lab license, he said. To use the county’s lab license, schools had to sign an agreement with several stipulations.
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“It’s going to be a simpler process to go through one of the channels we’ve been working on,” Hughes said.
Despite cases of Covid-19 spiking across Erie County, the state has opened the door for schools to resume in-person instruction sooner than anticipated, at least for some students.
But public schools in Erie County's orange zone likely will not reopen until next week at the earliest.
The county Health Department announced Tuesday that it had decided to allow schools to use a “new” license that had been obtained by the county’s Division of Emergency Medical Services.
“Our emergency preparedness team has used this time to obtain a new LSL and develop a plan that addresses our concerns and meets the needs of schools that choose to provide diagnostic Covid-19 tests to continue or resume in-person learning,” Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein said in a statement Tuesday.
Kara Kane, a spokeswoman for the Erie County Health Department, said the county received the license on Nov. 16.
Much of Erie County was designated as a yellow zone Nov. 9. Three days later, the state Health Department issued guidance saying that counties “are required to allow schools to operate under their limited service laboratory license for the purposes of conducting weekly testing.”
Without help from Erie County, officials at schools in the orange zone say it will be nearly impossible for them to reopen until the governor lifts the Covid-19 zone designation.
Other counties in yellow zones worked quickly to help schools. Monroe County quickly let the schools use its lab license and ordered the tests from the state. Onondaga County sent its own staff to administer the tests in schools.
Erie County, though, initially declined to let the schools use its license and refused to administer the tests. Officials said they feared the county’s license could be jeopardized if the schools were to make any errors while operating under its license.
“From a medical perspective, we were concerned how schools, which do not typically provide medical services, could carry out these programs safely and with quality results,” Burstein said.
She had suggested that schools instead either apply for their own lab license or partner with an organization in the community that had a lab license.
Much of Erie County was upgraded to an orange zone Nov. 18, and the rest of the county was designated as yellow. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that schools in an orange zone will need to test 20% of their students and staff every month.
Several local school districts already have obtained their own lab license and have received Covid-19 tests from the state.
Schools are still waiting for clarification from the state regarding the recent change in testing rules for schools in an orange zone.
Some private schools in the orange zone, however, have already begun testing – and at least one has already reopened.
Christian Central Academy in Williamsville conducted a rapid testing clinic on Friday, with the costs covered by donors. The tests yielded a positivity rate of less than .5%, according to Stuart Chen, the school’s president.
“Most of our students learn better in an on-campus setting, so we have worked very hard to provide it,” he said.
