More than 118,000 internal saliva tests in the university community during the COVID-19 crisis
The end of June 2022 marks the end of saliva testing at the University of Liège. This is an opportunity to make a first and brief assessment, 21 months after the start of a unique experiment made possible by the creativity and innovative spirit of ULiège researchers.
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ndeed, the testing of the university community in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was based on the salivary self-sampling kit associated with the new semi-automated RT-PCR analysis method, both developed by the teams of the ULiège Covid Laboratory.
Saliva testing is not the only initiative taken by ULiège to monitor and manage the epidemic within the university.
In April 2021, the SARSSURV seroprevalence survey began, in which more than 1200 members of the university community (students and staff) are still participating.
In June 2021, ULiège acquired an additional instrument with an institutional dashboard for epidemiological guidance based on an interdisciplinary scientific approach. This dashboard, under the responsibility of the ULiège Risk Assessment Group, is composed of more than ten indicators, several of which are directly fed by the data from the SARSSURV study and the results of the internal saliva testing within the university community.
The end of the saliva testing also marks the end of the publication of the results, which was published 25 times between June 2021 and June 2022.
On the other hand, the SARSSURV survey continues (in a lighter version, without the weekly saliva test and the monthly blood self-test): participants are invited to remain attentive to the messages sent by the study leaders.
Learn more about how to stop ULiège saliva testing
Assessment of the working groups in charge of providing data for several indicators of the dashboard: