Gakii Masunga, who is studying for her master’s in bioethics at Harvard Medical School, was among the first students to take the University’s new COVID-19 test. She picked up the self-administered kit last Thursday at a pilot site outside Quincy House. There, she activated the test tube’s barcode on the web-based platform called Color and answered a couple of health questions.
After swabbing each nostril — 1 inch in, three rotations around — she scanned the barcode onto the platform’s app, and then walked to Lowell House to drop the specimen into a bin at the designated test collection point.
“I wasn’t sure what it would be like, but it takes a few minutes at best,” said Masunga, who will serve as community health lead in Lowell. “I thought it might be overwhelming and time-consuming, but the test is actually very smooth.”
