UNC-Chapel Hill students want more accessible COVID testing as cases increase

But students worry that existing testing options are not enough to keep the campus community safe.

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Carolina Union, which offers tests to asymptomatic students, is not open on weekends, meaning students may not be able to get a test in time if they were exposed late in the week.

Only students who are feeling sick have access to COVID testing on weekends – through Campus Health, which is open Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Until Wednesday, a university website listed a $50 fee for those tests. That fee was eliminated at the beginning of the fall semester, a university spokesman said, but some students may have recently been charged in error.

"It’s very hard to justify not offering a test over the weekend. Not offering tests in more than one location," said Simon Palmore, a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. "At a time when there are so many students, faculty staff are anxious about being safe on this campus."

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University officials said that the Carolina Union testing site conducted more than 2,000 tests on Monday and 6,500 in the past week.

More than 2% of all tests conducted among asymptomatic students came back positive, and 8% of tests among students feeling sick came back positive.

Students took to Twitter to share photos of long lines outside testing sites. One Tweet posted by student Emily Taylor got more than 1,000 likes.

"I’m concerned about the lack of transparency in reporting the cases," Palmore said.

UNC-Chapel Hill officials told WRAL News, "We typically do not have lines for testing, with the exception of high volume times during class changes and lunch. Even at those times the line moves very quickly, and wait times typically do not exceed 10 minutes."

But students who have had to wait in that line claim the wait is at least 30 minutes.

"It’s gonna be hard to find a time to get that test when the reservations are full and the walk-in line is really long," Palmore said.

On Wednesday the university reported that there have been nearly 500 new coronavirus cases and five clusters in on-campus housing since Aug. 1.

The university said that they do not recommend students who are vaccinated and not considered an official close contact get tested. But Palmore said that students are on edge, and if they think they were exposed, they want to get tested.

"We do have testing available on the weekend for symptomatic and close contact students at Campus Health, however we do not need to conduct asymptomatic surveillance testing on the weekends," university officials said.