By Anqi Zhang

To address residents’ concerns about the COVID-19 testing site on 116 Harrison Avenue, located inside Chinatown, the Office of Ed Flynn organized a Zoom meeting on Aug. 18 for different parties in the community. The site is welcoming students from two universities in the neighborhood. Attendees of the discussion included Chinatown residents and representatives from Tufts Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, and Emerson College.

“I believe that we should have a robust conversation about neighbors’ concerns about reopening testing and how we can address them as a community,” said Flynn, speaking to the necessity of community input involvement during the whole process.

Chinatown residents are worried about the possibility of super spreading, with students returning to the campuses and taking COVID-19 tests in Chinatown.

“Enforcement needs to be discussed,” he said, including “how we can effectively ensure that students are wearing masks, observing physical distancing, and not congregating in large groups or parties.”

The testing site opened in August and is located at the former site of the Tufts University bookstore. It was built by Tufts University in partnership with its Medical Center and accepts students from Tufts University Graduate School and Emerson College to take COVID-19 testing.

Tom Malone, Executive Associate Dean at Tufts University School of Medicine, said that there is a little confusion between the testing site for students and the walk-up facility that the Tufts Medical Center is currently running. The walk-up facility located at 171 Harrison Ave is open to the public. No pre-registration for this location is required.

“The facility at 116 Harrison Avenue was designed to not have lines of people outside,” Malone said. No more than 50 people would be scheduled per half hour, and the inside testing space can currently hold at least 50 people, he explained.

Rocco DiRico, Director of Government and Community Relations at Tufts University, said in the meeting, “a key part of our plan is to reduce density on campus as much as possible.”

Among the 2700 students enrolled in programs on the health science campus, which is located in the Chinatown area, less than 1300 would be required for on-campus instruction, DiRico said. Most of those students come from dental and medical school, “so generally speaking, they’re very conscious of the importance of health care, masks, and social distancing,” he said.

To further guarantee that the community spread does not occur due to students coming and going at the campus, Tufts University set up a mandatory surveillance testing program, which all students are required to participate in at least once a week.

Responding to residents’ question about why Emerson College set its testing site at Tufts Medical Center rather than its own campus, Peggy Ings, the Vice President of Government and Community Relations at Emerson College, said they do not have the medical resources and expertise needed on campus.

“It’s also the intention of the college to keep the Chinatown community safe. We will have monitors at the site,” said Ings. “The college’s goal is to try to do the testing, repeat the testing, and repeat it again, so that we catch anything and everything at the time when the students first arrive.”

Another opinion from residents expressed at the meeting was about the lack of communication on the testing site and that the community involvement was missed during the process.

“I know there were mistakes made. One of the mistakes was not really engaging the residents, but that’s in the past,” said Flynn. He said that in the following days, “in terms of notifying the residents, please notify me first. I’m the elected official, and I will coordinate outreach to the Chinatown community.” Additionally, residents must not forget to communicate with relative neighborhood organizations, which “do a tremendous, outstanding job,” he said.

Lydia Lowe, Executive Director at Chinatown Community Land Trust, said that the surrounding communities are as concerned as the campus community and that they have hoped that a mechanism will form to keep the communication regularly circulating. 

“I hope this is something we can continue, whether it’s once a week or every two weeks or so,” said Flynn. “Let’s continue working together. That’s the critical part of this process.”