SINGAPORE, Oct 6 — The National University of Singapore (NUS) on Monday stepped up the frequency of Covid-19 self-tests for its staff and students, before they can return to campus for physical lessons.
The students did not seem to mind it, with a number of them telling TODAY that it was a small price to pay for them to be able to return to a conducive learning environment, and to interact with their peers.
NUS is currently the only university in Singapore that requires both staff and students to undergo regular testing for Covid-19.
The university’s Fast and Easy Test (FET) regime, which uses antigen rapid test kits, kicked in on Aug 10 this year.
Up until Monday, fully vaccinated staff members and students who did not stay on campus had to do a self-swab before their first visit to the campus, and thereafter another self-test before every 20th visit to the campus.
For those who had yet to be fully vaccinated, they had to do a self-swab before their first visit, and once more before every fifth visit to the campus.
In its latest circular to both staff and students last Thursday, the university said it would be updating the frequency “for the protection of the campus community”.
The circular stated that the FET test results will now only be valid for seven consecutive days, including the day of testing, for those who are fully vaccinated, while the validity for the unvaccinated is four consecutive days.
‘Minor inconvenience’
Despite the increase in frequency, students said they do not mind the minor inconvenience.
Ashwin Unnithan, a third-year business student, said that with the rising number of daily Covid-19 cases, he felt it was a necessity.
Within the past week, the daily reported Covid-19 cases have been trending above 2,000 and it hit a high of 3,486 cases yesterday.
“It is a bit irritating when you have to do the swab, but honestly given the circumstances and cases, it’s more of a social responsibility,” said the 23-year-old who, like other students TODAY spoke with, attends physical classes at least once a week on top of virtual lessons.
Fellow business student Calvin Loke, who is also in his third year, added that having the tests gives him a “peace of mind” by knowing those around him are free of the coronavirus.
On the rising case numbers, the 23-year-old said he was not overly concerned as long as the community does its part to mask up, practise good hygiene and observe safe distancing.
“For students our age, we are young and healthy. Most of us will be asymptomatic so I don’t see a need for concern,” said Loke. “The concerns should be for the elderly and the healthcare system.”
For one second-year political science student, who declined to provide her name, the increase in testing frequency is not something that has overly bothered her.
Rather, she said she was just grateful that she could return to campus for some of her tutorials as learning in the classroom was more conducive as “a lot of people can’t study well at home”.
Aside from that, she said being able to see her peers and professors in person made it easier to facilitate discussions, and she could interact socially with them.
“That’s a major part of university life,” said the 20-year-old.
An NUS spokesperson said in response to TODAY’s queries that more than half of the university’s classes are conducted online.
The spokesperson said this is in view of the “national effort to achieve normalcy as we move towards Covid-19 resilience”.
All face-to-face classes are conducted in accordance to the national safety guidelines, such as a maximum of 50 people, including teaching staff, per venue, safe distancing and mask-wearing, said the spokesman.
Jack Chua, a first-year engineering student, said he appreciated this move as it was just not practical to conduct some lessons virtually.
The 21-year-old cited the testing of the physical properties of a material as one example. He said previously, his faculty tried conducting the lesson online by testing the materials for the students and sending them the data.
“This got rid of the data collection learning process for the students and made the lesson completely useless,” he said.
For business students like Unnithan, he said being able to attend lessons physically was important as some of his modules are presentation based.
“The students would have to do presentations for the class, share their answers and findings,” he said.
“In that sense the delivery would be very different if it was via (the video conferencing platform) Zoom where you are just presenting to a screen and not the class itself.”
He added that another downside of online classes is that sometimes students do not even turn on their cameras, and the professor “won’t know if what he is delivering is getting across to the students”.
In a circular disseminated to business students last Monday, the school’s dean, Professor Andrew Rose, said that having a hybrid teaching format was in their “best interest” both in terms of public health safety and academic learning.
While he acknowledged the need for the community to safeguard themselves against Covid-19, he said face-to-face learning cannot be disregarded as well because “it is far more effective than learning online”. — TODAY
