Daily COVID-19 symptom self-checker arrives

Beginning on Mon. Aug. 31, all members of the New College community will begin using a daily COVID-19 symptom self-checker before coming to campus.
“We’re doing this because we’re trying to have people monitor their health carefully and, if they feel ill, they need to stay home,” said Anne Fisher, Ph.D., the program director of New College’s Counseling & Wellness Center (CWC). “It will help everyone pay more attention to their health.”
For faculty and staff, this tool is a dynamic form on the myNCF portal (built by staff in the Office of Information Technology and leveraged by the Human Resources Department). For students, the format is a health checker app, created by the University of South Florida (USF), which can be downloaded onto smartphones. Students set up their NetIDs with USF and receive email notifications about the app.
“For students, if they have even one symptom they report on the checker, it will automatically tell them to stay in their room,” Fisher said. “The app is hooked up to USF Student Health Services, so once a student checks a symptom, one of their healthcare providers will contact the student and talk to them about their symptoms. The students will then need to get medically cleared to go to class.”
New College is now testing 10 percent of all students and employees for COVID-19 at random on a weekly basis. The CWC will notify selected students, and Human Resources will notify faculty and staff. New College is currently offering both in-person and remote learning options. Strict safety measures are in place—from social distancing and face covering to deep cleaning.
Every student, staff and faculty member was tested prior to returning to campus, and drive-through testing clinics (conducted by Lab Services) were set up outside of Sainer Pavilion in July and August. This enabled New College to establish a baseline against which to measure and trace future infections.
Because New College lacks a medical or public health school for in-house advice, Student Health Services on the adjacent USF Sarasota-Manatee campus is providing all medical services to students.
For more information on the student symptom self-checker, visit netid.usf.edu/Activate or call (813) 974-HELP (4357), option 6.
Employees should direct testing questions to Loretta Shields, assistant vice president of Human Resources, at (941) 487-4417 or [email protected].