It was almost three years ago, on March 11, 2020, that world health officials declared COVID-19 a pandemic. A little more than a month later, on April 25, 2020, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order authorizing licensed pharmacists to order and administer tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration to detect a COVID-19 infection or its antibodies.
And then ACPHS sprung into action.
The College developed health and safety policies and also established a daily health questionnaire and COVID-19 testing for its own campus, Albany Law School, Maria College, The College of Saint Rose and Russell Sage College. That summer, ACPHS applied to operate a limited service laboratory, and by August had opened an official testing site – in the best ventilated but covered space on campus, the carport outside the O’Brien building.
It became a hub of COVID-19 testing activity for the five colleges, through the hard work of faculty, staff and students, including many volunteers. When the weather got frigid and vaccines emerged, the testing site was moved to the gymnasium, and then, as the population was widely vaccinated and concerns began to diminish, to a smaller room in the Holland Avenue Building in August 2022. It remained open until Fall 2022.
Once vaccines were available, ACPHS began inoculating the community in addition to testing. Thousands of people were tested and vaccinated over those two and a half years.
As the former manager of the lab, alum Khadija Moussadek ’20, said, “The pandemic really showed ACPHS's commitment to working together in a concerted effort to grow our community and empower each other and keep us all safe.”
See what Moussadek and student volunteers Sophia Braithwaite and Jonathan Braithwaite have to say about experiencing a pandemic in college and the opportunities it presented, in the video below.