LEXINGTON, Ky. – COVID-19 testing for the nearly 30,000 University of Kentucky students planning to return to campus for fall classes began today, Monday, Aug. 3. 

Testing takes place from 8 a.m.- 4 p.m. each day until Aug. 22 at a drive-thru site in the blue lot at Kroger Field, and walk-up testing sites at South Limestone between University Avenue and State Street; Blazer Dining on South Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard; Greek Park on Rose Lane; and Near The 90 at Hilltop and Woodland avenues.

UK Chief of Police Joe Monroe was at Kroger Field on Monday and said he expected nearly 2,000 students would be tested at drive-thru site the first day. 

“The swabbing takes less than a minute to do – five seconds in each nostril, and then they are on their way,” Monroe said. “We're averaging about 200 cars per hour since 8 a.m. this morning. We anticipate, based on our pre-scheduling, that we’re going to have roughly about 1,600-1,700 come through here today.” 

As students arrived at the site, they registered in one of five lanes by confirming their date of birth or name, then drove up to one of five tents to get tested. Total time at the site averaged about 15 minutes, Monroe said.

“What we’ve noticed is 10 minutes before the hour to 10 minutes after the hour – that 20-minute window is when everybody seems to show up,” he said. “So, we are encouraging people now to come on the half-hour.”

Monroe said several positive results are expected with so many tests, and UK has a protocol in place to assist those students that test positive, such as follow-ups by the school’s contact-tracing team and providing instructions for what they need to do before the first day of classes on Aug. 17.

“We’ll help them get all the resources they need,” Monroe said.

The testing sites took a lot of planning concerning logistics.  

“It took us about a week to plan and do some dry runs with cars to make sure we had it laid out OK,” Monroe said. “What we’re trying to do is make sure nobody's waiting for more than 15 minutes. Testing this many people at once is not something that’s been done to this scale. Most of the drive-thru sites in Lexington are seeing about 500 per day, I think, maybe 1,000. So, we are really pushing the limit.”  

Wild Health, the company contracted by UK to conduct the testing, created a wireless network at the drive-thru site connecting all five testing tents that allows students’ information to be submitted and labels printed in real-time, which allows for faster results. Students tested at the drive-thru site should expect to have their results in 24 to 36 hours.

“We've really thought this process out for the last two and a half weeks,” Monroe said. “I feel like we got it down pretty good.”

UK student Brian Ross said the drive-thru site is a “pretty good setup” to get all students tested, and UK student Kiah Gledhill said he was surprised at how fast the line was moving.

“I haven’t been waiting too long,” he said. “Hopefully, it continues at the current pace.”

UK students will begin moving into residence halls over nine days, beginning Aug. 8. Students who take all their classes online and do not plan to visit the campus for any reason are not required to be tested. More information about testing and UK’s restart plans is available at www.uky.edu/coronavirus/.