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Radboud University starts pilot with self-tests for students

14 Apr 2021

Radboud University has started a pilot with corona self-tests for students. Those who test negative are permitted to attend classes on campus. The idea is to investigate how more in-person education can be made possible.

Students can now attend lectures again on the campus of Radboud University. This applies in any case to four tutorial groups of the Radboud Honours Academy and two tutorial groups of the Microeconomics course. Together with a few study programmes of the HAN, they are participating in a pilot with rapid self-tests from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. A total of 400 students have registered for the pilot.

Students of the relevant study programmes are free to choose whether they participate. ‘They can pick up a test package at a counter on campus,’ says university spokesperson Martijn Gerritsen. ‘They are supposed to test themselves at home before participating in the tutorials. They will receive instructions for this via Zoom.’

Getting tested again

Students who test negative are allowed to attend lectures on campus. Anyone who tests positive is requested to get tested again at the GGD. The RIVM rules still apply in the lecture hall, such as keeping a distance of 1.5 metres from each other.

The Nijmegen tests do not stand alone: the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is investigating throughout the country how more in-person education can be made possible in the new academic year. In the Nijmegen pilot, both researchers from Radboud University and Radboudumc are taking on this task.

Research on student well-being is carried out by Professor of Religious Studies Hans Schilderman, Professor of Communication Science José Sanders and sociologist of religion Joris Kregting, who previously conducted research into the impact of the corona crisis on the well-being of students and employees. ‘We have conducted a survey among students and done interviews, each time with the emphasis on well-being and test experience,’ says Hans Schilderman.

Professor Heiman Wertheim and Dr Foekje Stelma, both from the Clinical Microbiology department at Radboudumc, are leading the research into the use of rapid tests. The first results of the studies are expected at the beginning of May.

26 April

At the cabinet’s latest press conference, Tuesday 23 March, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge announced that they wanted to provide more space for in-person education for students. From 26 April, students are permitted to come to campus again one day a week, provided that the contamination figures allow it and that self-tests are used. The Nijmegen pilot is part of that endeavour.

Rector Han van Krieken previously announced that students from Radboud University will be welcome on campus again from September. If the 1.5-metre regulation is still in effect, then students must be vaccinated or be able to present a negative test result in order to attend lectures; Van Krieken wrote about this in a column on Radboudnet. Outgoing Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge responded by stating that the vaccination campaign will already have progressed so far in September that an admission policy will probably not be necessary.

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