Yale COVID-19 Testing & Outreach Programs

Yale’s COVID-19 Testing Program consists of two components: testing and outreach. The main focus of asymptomatic testing is to identify individuals who may be incubating infection, isolate them promptly from the community, perform case investigation with confirmed cases of COVID-19 to identify linkages among cases that may help us limit transmission and prevent outbreaks, and notify identified close contacts to provide guidance. While testing benefits the tested individual, our main public health objective is to reduce risk to the wider campus community and to New Haven.

• Viral testing (PCR or polymerase chain reaction): PCR is currently the most widely available diagnostic test for COVID-19. It relies on identifying viral genetic material in secretions from the nose, throat or saliva. Yale is currently using anterior nasal self-obtained swabs for asymptomatic and symptomatic screening.
• Antibody testing: Not recommended for diagnostic testing or for proof of immunity at this time.
• Rapid or “point-of-care” testing: Identifies proteins on the surface of the virus. It can be conducted with an at-home kit or in a clinical setting (point of care testing). They are less accurate than a PCR test. Negative results may be false negatives (showing a negative result when infection is actually present) early in disease when the amount of circulating virus is low. Positive tests are highly reliable. A negative rapid test in the presence of symptoms should be repeated in 24-48 hours.

Test results are generally available 24 to 36 hours after the sample is obtained. Results are housed in Epic, Yale Health’s electronic health record. Results are released to MyChart, Epic’s patient portal, when finalized by the lab. All faculty, staff, and students tested through the Yale COVID-19 Testing Program must enroll in MyChart to receive results.

Five different results are possible:

• Negative results: Indicate no evidence of Infection at the time of the test. You may have a very low level of virus in your system so this does not rule out that you may become positive on a subsequent test.
• Positive results: Indicate that there was evidence of viral infection at the time the sample was taken. What to expect in the event of a positive test:
  • You will isolate at home or in designated isolation housing if an on-campus student.
  • You will receive instructions regarding next steps. Yale Health staff will call a subset of students as well.
  • Supervisors or deans will also be notified in order to provide support and to ensure a review of environmental safety precautions in the workplace or college.
  • You will be contacted by Yale’s COVID-19 Outreach Team (YCOT) through the notification process, close contacts are provided guidance on how to take care of themselves and prevent transmission to others.
  • Learn more about the YCOT process.
  • You will be released from isolation via email when appropriate
• Inconclusive: The test looks for 2 sites on the virus; both must be positive for the test to be considered positive. When only 1 viral site is positive the test is called inconclusive and must be repeated, as it could represent an early positive test. You should repeat your test within 24 hours.
• Invalid: The lab uses human DNA as a control to make sure the sample is adequate. If there is no human DNA in the sample, it is labeled as invalid and not processed. In most cases, this indicates a need to be firmer in how you are swabbing the sides of your nose. Schedule a repeat test.
• TNP: This result means Test Not Processed. This can happen for a number of reasons but one of the most common reasons is too much mucous in the sample which most often happens when someone doesn’t blow their nose. Schedule a repeat test.

If you receive an inconclusive, invalid, or TNP result, you should schedule another test.

We are tracking a number of key Yale, local, and regional data streams to ensure that Yale leadership has the information they need to make critical decisions, and the Yale community has access to local trends. The Yale COVID-19 Data page is updated daily based on data from the asymptomatic testing program as well as symptomatic testing of the Yale Health insured population.