BATON ROUGE - As LSU students return to campus for the spring semester, university officials are not mandating that COVID tests be completed prior to in-person classroom attendance. That said, officials are strongly encouraging students to be tested.

University leaders hope to motivate students to undergo testing by offering incentives such as bi-weekly raffle giving out AirPods and Apple watches.

Testing is currently offered on campus at both the Student Union and Coates Hall. The university will also continue to carry out randomized mandatory testing to ensure that the virus is not being spread throughout the student population.

Additionally, the university will soon receive around 200 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to administer to its public safety and health care personnel.

Eventually, however, the university expects to receive enough doses for staff and students. They anticipate these additional doses will likely be available by late Spring.

LSU's Interim President, Tom Galligan, explained his outlook on the university's fight against COVID, by saying, "We're fine-tuning, we're augmenting, and I think with the incentives and with the messages, we're trying to get it across, "Listen the end is coming the end is near, but we've just got to keep it up!"

He added, "We've got to stay focused and we've got to keep fighting."

Click here for more on the LSU community's most recent efforts to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.