The Citrus mobile daily screening has lost its power and importance.
The screen app, developed by third-party company Ready Education, is now entirely pointless because it has students screening for COVID with no follow-through.
The mobile app had been developed to deliver critical information to students. The daily screening is no longer necessary because the school is not following through with onsite COVID-19 testing this fall, the Citrus College website said.
If students are no longer required to test weekly COVID-19 before entering campus, then the app is no longer accurately able to track COVID-19 cases throughout the campus.
In spring, when the daily screening portion of the app was useful, students would have to take a weekly in-person COVID-19 screening and would not be allowed to enter campus if they had a positive test.
In theory, students were not supposed to enter the campus without weekly testing and an online daily screening. Citrus did have trouble implementing that, and many students would just answer the questions without taking a rapid test.
“None of my teachers use it anymore,” math student Ryan Ayala said. “You’re the first person I spoke to this year about it. I didn’t know the school was even using it (daily screening) anymore.”
The daily screening portion no longer has the power it once did.
In May, the Clarion reported campus-wide enforcement of the daily screening app. Anyone who had not completed COVID-19 testing was flagged and forced to stand in long lines to screen for COVID-19 before starting school.
“I remember being 30 minutes late when I got the red check mark,” STEM major Stephanie Ramos said. “They got everybody that day.”
The daily screening app had power to check students before letting them on campus. This reminded students to follow procedures, reduce spread, check for COVID-19 and go to class.
Now it feels like a paperweight that only some professors are enforcing. Without the backing of the COVID-19 testing, the daily screening feels like an optional questionnaire and not an accurate tracking unit.
With flu season fast approaching and other emerging diseases like monkeypox, the daily screening should be revised to fit the school’s needs.
If Citrus College should either stick with the county’s measures or completely abandon them.
Half measures like screening with no testing are leaving students confused, and the implications of neglecting to screen are unknown now.
“I feel like I’m going to get a notification that I haven’t been doing this (screening),” English student Jackie Garcia said. “I have not done the screening once and I feel like starting a month in is not worth my time, like it doesn’t do anything.”
If the school wants to make up its own guidelines like the daily screening app, it should be able to outfit and test for seasonal viruses like the flu.
This would give the app purpose again, and students could actively contribute to reducing the spread by being aware of cases on campus.
