AUSTIN (KXAN) — With a March expiration date rapidly approaching, the Eanes Independent School District will be easing up its protocols to allow more students to receive rapid COVID-19 testing at their leisure in order to deplete its existing supply of tests.
A spokesperson for EISD said the district has only used about 200 of the BinaxNOW Rapid Antigen tests, which expire at the end of March. That’s barely 10% of the 1,960 tests provided by the state.
Up until now, testing has only been offered to staff. But beginning within the next week or two, testing will be expanded to students, with large-scale testing days provided on weekends during February and March.
There are no additional plans to mandatorily require testing of students participating in extracurriculars, but school officials say students may choose to receive a rapid test ahead of events, if they choose.
The Austin Independent School District has had multiple large-scale mass testing days offered to students and staff for the past few months. It is still unclear how many remaining rapid tests are being stored within the AISD warehouse and what their expiration dates are.
Previously only allowed to in-person students, AISD has now opened testing to remote learners and staff on Thursday, Jan. 21 and Friday, Jan. 29. People can go to either the north location at Northeast Early College High School (Nelson Field) or the south location at the Austin ISD Central Office. Testing today goes from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Liza Camarillo, a teacher at AISD, said she was exposed to COVID-19 from someone who was asymptomatic. She received an rapid test from the district on Thursday, which came back negative.
“Today is the last day of my 14-day quarantine from a school exposure, so it was very helpful to get a negative result and helped my anxiety,” Camarillo said.
Participants must register to be guaranteed testing. Register here.
Reach KXAN’s Education Reporter Alex Caprariello by email at alexc@kxan.com or by phone at 512-703-5365, or find him on Twitter and Facebook.
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