Gulam Haider is a fifth-year pharmacy student at St. John’s University in Queens. 

He’s helping to observe COVID-19 testing at the university, as students return to campus for the Spring semester. 

What You Need To Know

  • Clinical health graduate students are helping to oversee COVID-19 testing at St. John's University

  • The tests are processed in a lab on campus

  • During the pre-entry testing as classes are beginning, the school is processing up to 1,000 COVID-19 tests a day

  • St. John's also has a new president at the helm, Fr. Brian Shanley, formerly of Providence College

Students self-admister the nasal swabs — as Haider watches carefully. It's real-world opportunity to learn while he’s still on campus.

“Testing, especially at the stage that we’re in, is very important. And I just wanted to be a part of it,” said Haider.

Graduate students in clinical health science process the swabs in a lab across campus.

Each day, the school processes up to 1,000 tests, which are mandatory for returning students. 

Once the semester is in full-swing, they'll conduct about 1,3000 surveillance tests a week. 

“It’s very important for their clinical experience," said Dr. Yasmine Lashine, a Clinical Lab Manager at St. John’s University. "They’re all either masters students or PhD students. They might be working in the lab anyways, they have to learn about community service. And offering to helping others. During this pandemic, we all need to help."

Close to 70% of St. John's nearly 20,000 students will be on campus for some sort of in-person learning this semester.

That compares to 42% on campus last fall. Junior Malik Jawad has a hybrid schedule — two classes on campus and three he'll access remotely from his Queens Village home.

“In person is the best to me,” said Jawad. “Getting the feel with speaking to the professor, looking to them eye-to-eye. It’s more understanding, I just understand better."

This is not the first pandemic faced by St. John’s, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary.

But it's the first under its new president — Father Brian Shanley, formerly the head of Providence College. He’s optimistic for the future.

“Hopefully we can begin to plan for whatever the new normal is next year on campus. I don’t think we’ll go back as a country and as a world to the way things were before. But whatever the new normal is, I think we’ll appreciate it more than we might have if this hadn’t happened,” said Father Shanley.

St. John’s has been selected as a vaccine hub. It’s not clear when vaccinations will begin there, but administrators say they have 470 students certified to give vaccines and dozens of faculty members to oversee them.