GEORGETOWN, Ky. – Faculty members from the biology and chemistry departments at Georgetown College in Scott County have partnered to utilize the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method of testing students for COVID-19. LAMP testing is known for being a rapid, accurate, and low-cost method of pool testing using saliva and urine. 

Georgetown College biology professor Dr. Tracy Livingston and assistant professor of biology Dr. Caleb Fischer worked to develop the LAMP test because they “wanted to combine our love of and expertise in science with the practical goal of making our community as safe as possible” as the pandemic rages on, Livingston said.

Georgetown College biology professor Dr. Tracy Livingston (left) and assistant professor of biology Dr. Caleb Fisher.

“The LAMP test detects viral nucleic acid and is quick, cheap, and allows us to test a large number of individuals simultaneously,” she said.

The college started using the LAMP method in late summer to help slow the spread of COVID-19 by testing small groups of student-athletes because they have a higher chance of a positive test. The pooled testing completes the sample quickly and without nasal swabs.

“The test can be especially valuable when there are sizable populations that need to be tested quickly, such as if there is a potential outbreak within certain athletic teams or at specific dorms,” Fischer said. “When combined with other testing approaches and alongside contact tracing, LAMP can be part of a toolkit to help curtail larger outbreaks and keep the community safe.”

When a pooled test returns a positive, the students from that group are notified immediately to isolate and get an individual test as soon as possible. Students that are members of a positive testing group may choose to get a rapid test to avoid quarantining should the results return as negative, otherwise they are asked to isolate until a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test returns negative results.

Georgetown College Vice President of Enrollment Management Dr. Jonathan Sands Wise said the idea of using LAMP testing began over the summer when school administrators were making plans about whether and how to safely return to class for the fall semester. 

“One of the things that became clear very quickly was that we were going to need to do testing, contact tracing, and quarantining as part of our plan, so that's only one part of everything we're doing to try to keep students safe,” Sands Wise said. “We require masks, have classrooms outdoors, improved ventilation – we did a lot of different things. We use a health check app every day, but we were going to have to be able to test regularly and then do contract tracing off that testing.”

Sand Wise said the goal is if there are cases of COVID-19, especially asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases, the school administrators could catch those quickly. The school is also currently doing regular screenings in cooperation with Wedco, the local health department,  every other week as cases have been rising in Kentucky and in Scott County. 

“We test half the campus every week to make sure we're catching outbreaks before they ever really get started,” he said. “Then we negotiated a contract to get testing in our health center so students who are either in contact or are known who have been in contact with students who are positive, or who have symptoms, can be tested that way.” 

It was also over the summer when Livingston and Fischer decided they wanted to use their abilities in the sciences to help the campus community. On their own initiative, the professors conducted some research and saw the protocols for LAMP tests were being developed. 

“Some of the really big-name universities like Harvard and Washington University in St. Louis were using LAMP tests and [Livingston and Fischer] determined our biology and chemistry labs had the capacity to do this sort of testing,” Sands Wise said. “They asked if it would be of any potential interest, and at that point, I was open to anything that might give us a way forward. So I asked them to explore and they did that faithfully for a couple of months. We're not a CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments) certified lab or anything like that, but it can give us information as a campus that we can then act on.” 

Livingston and Fischer began administering LAMP testing on themselves and some of their classes to see if it was regularly catching COVID-19, cross-referencing the LAMP test samples with samples tested at the school’s health center to ensure positives and negatives were the same from both tests. 

“We've got very high specificity on this test and high accuracy, so we said we’d keep it in our back pocket and use as one of our tools if we need it,” Sands Wise said. “About two weeks ago, several of our athletic teams had two or three cases suddenly show up. Two or three cases in a relatively small group of students, you're going to assume they're potentially spreading into each other – that didn't just happen randomly.” 

Fearing it could have spread further, Livingston and Fischer were asked about using the LAMP test, which uses a pooling method where lots of samples taken from many students are put together and tested. If the pooled tests show a negative, the presumption is everyone in that group is negative. If it comes back positive, it is likely someone in the pool may have COVID-19. Everyone in the test pool is then asked to shelter in place and get an individual test. 

“They tested four different athletic teams,” Sands Wise said. “We could use it also on dorms or residence halls. If we had several cases in a single residence hall, the goal is just to go ahead and narrow down from that whole group who might be positive and then just have that group get individual tests at the health department.” 

Sands Wise said the LAMP method is similar to the wastewater testing to detect COVID-19 being done at larger universities. 

“It’s the same kind of idea except it’s obviously a different substance they're testing,” he said. “But it's the same sort of testing idea in terms of the wide screening of groups at all times. In some ways, the bigger schools have an advantage over us because they would have a lot more people in the lab to do it. We just kind of have to rely on our faculty doing it out of the goodness of their heart to help the campus.”

LAMP testing is not always used at Georgetown College, but with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases across the country and Kentucky, including Scott County, Sands Wise said it will likely be used again if the school experiences a spike.

“We’ll use it whenever the numbers indicate we need it,” he said. “If we had another spike of three, four cases on a team or in a residence hall or something like that, we would probably do it again because it did work. Honestly, I hope we don't do it again this semester, because that would indicate we've really kept it under control and don't need to test everybody.”