NEWPORT, Ky. — The concern of a possible COVID-19 outbreak looms as more colleges bring students back to campus.

That's where a Northern Kentucky lab is stepping in to help.

Newport research lab is partnering with several universities to conduct what’s called surveillance testing.

“Right now we worked with about five universities in their back to school program,” said Brian Kincaid, CEO of Ethos Laboratories.

As students return to campus, administrators, health officials, and leaders are working to have solutions in place for infection control. 

“When you add back to school students, as a population that quite honestly did not get tested much in the summer, that’s going to pose a significant strain on the laboratory as a whole,” Kincaid said.

The FDA approved their lab for an Emergency Use Authorization for their at-home testing kits. 

“We chose a technology called PCR with MALDI-TOF. MALDI-TOF is basically a mass spectrometer,” Kincaid said.

This means Ethos can process COVID-19 samples in 12 hours using a different machine and set of chemicals than most labs. 

“We don’t use the same reagents other labs use in doing their PCR testing so we should not be impacted by the supply chain issues that other labs have been impacted with,” Kincaid said.

The CEO said the major issue in the industry at the moment is the turnaround time to provide results.  

“If you’re unable to maintain turn around time of less than, say 72 hours, the test has a diminishing value at that point and it’s critically important that we as an industry try to maintain so there is value in the testing that is being done,” Kincaid said.

With more COVID-19 testing, mix that in with the start of the flu season, the at-home kits ease the process for students or anyone to mail the swabs and quarantine while awaiting results without being monitored by telehealth.

Ethos Laboratories is also in the process of working with public schools to conduct more testing and ease the supply chain demand.