George Washington University has developed and is launching its own in-house COVID testing, but, it is only to available students and employees of the private university.

All of those authorized to be on campus, which currently numbers about 4,000 people with all classes online, are required to get tested once a week. Results come back within one to two days, with all tests being processed through a new university laboratory specifically established for this purpose. The tests are PCR tests and are free of charge for all students and employees.

GW officials say they are currently processing about 600 tests a day and have the capacity to ramp up significantly if the university fully reopens in the spring.

Testing is currently available at two sites, on the Foggy Bottom campus in D.C. and at the Virginia Science & Technology campus in Ashburn. There, GW nursing students are collecting shallow nasal swabs which are then sent to GW’s COVID lab for results.

Dr. Amanda Castel, an epidemiologist at GW, helped develop the testing infrastructure for the university. She says that this is an imperative first step to potentially bringing back a full campus next year.

“We are a large community of faculty, staff and students. I think all in all, we’re somewhere around 30,000 individuals when everyone is on campus,” says Castel. “We’re also a city based university. So, we don’t have a wall that separates us from the rest of D.C. or the rest of Foggy Bottom.”

The university is also requiring daily symptom checks and a 10-day quarantine and clearance from GW’s health service if testing positive.

Castel says that this could be a model for other schools as they look to fully reopening in the coming months — the development of their COVID test and the building of their lab to process results.

“We are not at the whim of the commercial labs where… sometimes test results can take three to 14 days to come back,” says Castel. “By being able to process these tests in-house and get those results to individuals in a rapid manner, we’re also able to really try to contain the spread of the virus in our community.”

University officials say that GW is one of only a few schools nationwide that have done it this way.

When asked if the school’s testing capacity could ever be made available to the wider public considering D.C.’s ongoing challenges, Castel says not at the moment.

“At this point, it’s strictly for the university population.”