COVID-19 Information

Tests & Screenings

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is focused on preserving the health and safety of our community while continuing to provide excellent service to our students. See the university testing policy for more information. If you are experiencing symptoms and need to have a test or are concerned with exposure or need to have a screening done for reporting purposes, please see below for more information. Visit the following webpage if you are looking for more information on reporting your illness or exposure. 

Symptomatic Tests (experiencing symptoms)

Students

Schedule a telehealth visit through Student Health Service at 618-650-2842 or cougarcare@siue.edu.  Rapid tests and results are be provided before the student leaves Health Services.

Faculty & Staff

Contact your healthcare provider or learn more about local testing options.  

Asymptomatic Screening (not experiencing symptoms)

Students, Faculty & Staff

SIUE is offering a saliva-based Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) COVID-19 test through a partnership with Genetworx. PCR tests are considered the gold standard. It can detect the virus in people who are asymptomatic and/or individuals early in the course of disease and it has less than a 0.3% false positive rate. 

Screening tests are available at the following locations and the test will be processed through your health insurance, so please bring your insurance card with you. If your insurance does not cover the test, or if you do not have health insurance, be assured that the cost of the screening test process will be covered by SIUE. We do not want the cost of tests or an individual’s insurance situation to deter them from seeking screening testing as needed. 

The continuing screening tests will be on a voluntary basis.  However, to encourage participation, employees and students are selected through a random sample and invited to be tested.  Those invited will be provided with the following incentives to participate: 

• Students 
  • $5 deposited in Cougar Bucks 
  • Monthly raffle for parking hang-tag FY22 
  • One end-of-semester raffle for a Fall FY22 tuition waiver 
• Faculty/Staff 
  • $5 deposited in Cougar Bucks 
  • Monthly raffle for parking hang-tag FY22 

Emails on how to register and obtain testing will be sent to those selected on Thursdays (for the following week). Cougar Bucks will be added to Cougar Cards by the end of the week that one is tested.

One does not need to be invited to be tested, however they will not be eligible for the incentives listed above. 

Per CDC guidelines, employees and students who tested positive within the last 90 days will be removed from the random sample.  

School of Dental Medicine students will be required to be tested weekly.  Per CDC guidelines, SDM students who tested positive within the last 90 days will not be required to be tested.  

Positive Tests

Per CDC guidelines, employees and students who tested positive within the last 90 days should not test.

Contact Tracing

Contact tracing is the process of quickly identifying, assessing, and managing individuals who have been exposed to COVID-19 and is designed to prevent additional transmission. The specific goals of our contact tracing process include:

• Provide comprehensive identification, isolation and evaluation of individuals who might be exposed to COVID-19. 
• Prevent transmission of COVID-19 from a faculty, staff member or student to others. 
• Track and report cases of occupationally or socially acquired COVID-19 infection. 
• Comply with recommendations from state and local Departments of Public Health (DPH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Individuals who test positive for or are identified as having been exposed to COVID-19 will be required to participate in an isolation or self-quarantine period. A close contact is defined as any individual who was within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes starting from 2 days before illness onset (or, for asymptomatic patients, 2 days prior to positive test) until the time the student or employee is isolated. 

SIUE will only disclose the names of the individuals who have tested positive or who are part of the contact tracing process as necessary for public health and safety and will not do so publicly. Anyone who may have had close contact exposure with someone who tests positive will be contacted as part of the contact tracing process. If you were not contacted as a part of the contact tracing process, you were not deemed to be a close contact for tracing purposes.  

Additional Testing Resources

• Madison County Drive-Thru Testing Sites (scroll to find testing information)  
• St. Clair County Community Testing  
• Illinois Department of Public Health Testing Sites  
• City of St. Louis Testing Sites  
• St. Louis County Testing Sites