By: Reney Waters, Follow South Jersey Bridgeton City Intern

BRIDGETON, N.J. — Bridgeton Public Schools has taken another step to ensure staff and students are safe at school by partnering with RiteAid and BioReference through the Increasing Community Access to Testing (ICATT) initiative. This program will offer free COVID-19 testing for students, staff, and parents at select schools in the district.
Bridgeton Public Schools has previously partnered with Advance Management Services to offer free PCR nasal swab COVID-19 testing in the city. Its new partnership and participation in the ICATT program will further help Bridgeton fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
“ICATT in schools will help reduce disease spread, ensure that schools are safe environments for learning,” the ICATT team said in a statement. “From April to July 2021, the ICATT program anticipates screening testing in schools for as many 1.5 million teachers, staff, and students in communities that require additional resources and assistance to develop and implement a COVID-19 testing strategy.”
The program will serve as a complement to other federal government funding initiatives to increase COVID-19 testing nationwide and expand testing, such as the Health and Human Services’ (HHS) $10 billion funding through the CDC’s Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) Cooperative Agreement.
You can fill out this consent form for testing and visit the ICATT’s FAQ page if you have any questions or concerns regarding the programs.
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This article was produced by a Follow South Jersey news intern thanks to a grant provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through the New Jersey Health Initiatives program to create hyper-local news to meet the informational and health needs of the City of Bridgeton, N.J.