WEST Cork Olympic heroes Emily Hegarty and Paul O’Donovan have called on their fellow UCC students to row in behind a new Covid-19 rapid testing project.
The rowers have backed UniCoV, a project that will conduct a large-scale comparative analysis of testing technologies for use in disease surveillance and prevention in higher education settings.
These will include rapid antigen testing and the findings will inform the development of early warning systems for future disease outbreak prevention and control.
Volunteers will be trained to twice weekly perform rapid nasal swab antigen tests and provide saliva samples. After completing symptom and infectious-risk checks for Covid-19, they will upload an image of their test and scan a barcode on their saliva sample tube via a mobile phone app developed for this purpose by UCC IT Services and UCC Student Health.
Saliva samples will be left at on-campus drop-off points and volunteers will receive clear app and follow up email advice as to what to do should they have symptoms or should their test be positive for Covid.
