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NANCY DUPLECHAIN
LSN Associate Editor

VILLE PLATTE — In a first for the country, medicine and education are combining forces to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and Evangeline Parish is ground zero for the pilot program. Local doctors are partnering up with the Evangeline Parish School Board (EPSB) to help keep students and staff safe, and to gather data that will help the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) keep track of COVID cases.
Thanks to the federal government, Evangeline Parish received 13,360 COVID-19 tests. There are around 5,700 public school students. The government is rolling out this national cooperative endeavor with public schools to protect students and staff, and to gather statistical data. The antigen tests are from BinaxNOW and are authorized for emergency use by the FDA. The tests are roughly the size of a credit card that opens up like a greeting card. They work by looking for small molecules on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Dr. Chuck Aswell, Dr. Ellis Landreneau, and Dr. Tommy Fontenot are on the Medical Advisory Board that has agreed to bring COVID-19 testing kits to schools. Students who exhibit COVID symptoms will be tested by the school nurse, with the parents’ permission. If the test is negative, but the students still has symptoms, they will be sent to their physician for a PCR (a genetic, molecular test).
Aswell stressed the school tests cost nothing for the patient and spoke of the test’s accuracy. “It’s 97% sensitive, 98% specific, so if it’s positive, it’s positive.” If the student is diagnosed with COVID-19, they will be quarantined for ten days, and their siblings will be quarantined for 14 days. The additional quarantine days for siblings are due to it taking several days for the virus to be present in the patient after catching it. Parents will be tested, too. If the student tests negative but still has symptoms like cough and shortness of breath, they need to get a PCR test before they can go back to school. Aswell said if the student and/or siblings/parents do not have a primary care physician or do not have insurance or financial resources, he will give them the PCR test.
The school tests are reported to be fast, with results ready in 15 minutes; they cost approximately $5 per test (no cost to the patient), and they do not require specialized equipment. In fact, they read much the same as pregnancy tests; two lines is “positive,” and one line is “negative.” However, like all antigen tests, positive tests are reliably positive, but negative tests are “presumptive negative.” All tests are to be electronically reported to the Louisiana Department of Health.
“What we’re trying to do is make a pilot program that’s nowhere else in the United States. This is ground zero here,” said Aswell. He has been working closely with Dr. Tina Stefanski, the Region 4 (Acadiana) Medical Director for the LDH. Stefanski will also be helping to bring this new program to New Orleans, Los Angeles, and New York. Aswell praised the LDH staff and Stefanski’s expertise on her work during the pandemic, adding, “She’s a phenomenal person, always accessible. She’s a tremendous and very honest person.” He also gave credit to EPSB Superintendent Darwan Lazard, saying, “Superintendent Lazard and his crew have done an outstanding job so far to protect our kids. Nobody’s doing this in the country. Probably in six-to-eight months they’ll be doing it, but we’re the first people doing it.”
Lazard said, “I think it’s wonderful. I appreciate Dr. Aswell accepting the challenge, helping us out. Our goal is to operate our schools safely, for the benefit of our employees and our students. We’ve had him on the phone at some very late hours, trying to chart the right path for our schools. We appreciate working with him, the Medical Advisory Committee, and with Dr. Stefanski. They’ve been absolutely wonderful. I feel like we’re doing some things that will really benefit our students and our community as a whole.”
Aswell had to take courses to get Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certified with the state. He needed to be certified because he is overseeing the study to collect the data and to ensure the testing is conducted accurately and the students are taken care of.
According to Aswell, when people are diagnosed with COVID-19, they should follow up with their physician a few days later, adding the time window between the eighth and eleventh day seems to be the point where it gets worse. “You don’t want to see that ground-glass appearance on your lungs because you’re getting ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), and that’s when it’s time to save you.” He said if COVID-19 is caught early, some medications can help, but “if you’re really short of breath, you need to go to the emergency room, not to an urgent care,” because a CT scan will show the severity of the situation. He said an X-ray “doesn’t really tell you what’s going on.”
When asked if he wished more people would wear face coverings and social distance, Aswell said we are seeing severe spikes of COVID-19 cases in our country, and “I think masks and social distancing are very important. The most important thing as we go forward is we need to protect those people who are high risk.”
When asked if he sees any promise in the COVID-19 vaccines coming out, Aswell said, “That’s going to be the answer. If you take a flu vaccine it’s 40%-45% effective. These COVID-19 vaccines will be 90%-100% effective. That’s how we’re going to eradicate the disease. I’m sure there are mutations, but looking at the data now, it seems the vaccine will be good for life.” There are three companies coming out with vaccines with each company having tens of thousands of patients in their studies. “It’s safe. In all the data, it’s safe. You’re weighing the risk of taking a shot versus the risk of getting a disease that can kill you and also socially impact your life.”
Aswell said the data collected from the pilot program with the schools will help to determine new cases in the parish. “If we catch it early, we wear a mask, and we social distance, and we get people out of the system then we’re going to make a difference. In science we have to prove it. All the people who get swabbed will be in the system, as well as their parents and siblings.” He said it is rare for a child to die of COVID-19, “but one is too much. We hope to use these studies to make things better for our people,” said Aswell.