SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – In an effort to help schools reduce the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks as they resume in-person instruction, UC San Diego and San Diego County are testing a program to detect the virus which causes COVID-19 at schools and child care centers, it was announced Thursday. Modeled after UCSD’s Return to Learn — an approach to safely resume teaching, learning and research at a university — Safer at School Early Alert system is scaled for individual schools and child care centers without the resources available at a research university. Through daily wastewater and surface monitoring, the alert system tests for the presence of particles of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19-causing coronavirus. Combined with a responsive testing strategy, the aim is to quickly identify children or staff members who are infected with COVID-19 before an outbreak occurs.