WESTPORT — A day after school administrators reported a “sudden rise” in COVID-19 cases at Saugatuck Elementary School, the district’s top health official is reminding parents of the voluntary testing program available to all local elementary school students.

The weekly testing program for kindergarten through sixth-grade students began Monday, according to Suzanne Levasseur, the supervisor of health services for the Westport public schools.

The voluntary program, Lavasseur said, is designed to be “an additional control measure for early detection” of virus cases in the elementary schools.

Lavasseur reported Thursday that 269 students were tested for COVID on that first day and one positive case was identified.  

Parents of children in the testing program receive the results through a portal on the Progressive Diagnostic website — the firm contracted to conduct the school tests — as well as via email.

The school gets notifications only of positive individual cases, Lavasseur said in an emailed statement, “so there is no need for the identified students in a positive pool to quarantine.”

Students in the program are tested by an anterior shallow nasal swab PCR test, involving only the lower nasal area, she said.

Parents who want to register a child for the program need to fill out a consent form, which can be found here.

For additional information about the Progressive Diagnostics school COVID-19 testing program, click here.