Penn State adds 294 more COVID-19 cases at University Park since last update, boosts total to 1,666
For the fifth straight COVID-19 dashboard update, Penn State has added more than 200 new coronavirus cases to its overall count.
According to data from the dashboard, which is updated twice weekly, the University Park campus has added 294 new cases since Friday’s update, bringing the total number of infected to 1,666. (Some 1,053 cases are no longer active, according to university estimates.)
From Friday to Sunday, 68 students tested positive for the virus out of the 231 on-demand tests with results, while one student tested positive out of the 592 random-screened tests with results. Some 364 on-demand tests since Aug. 28 still have results pending, while another 389 overall random-screened tests are pending.
Because of the way testing is now done, the recent random-screened tests often won’t show positives until Friday. Friday-Sunday’s positives also don’t include the new results from old pending tests, which explains the new positive cases since the last update.
“We’re seeing a slight decline in our random testing data and in the number of students in our quarantine and isolation space, however we remain cautious and are continuing to monitor multiple data points,” Kelly Wolgast, director of the university’s COVID-19 Operations Control Center, said in a written statement.
Some 111 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation, while another 58 are in quarantine — an overall decrease from 144 and 41, respectively, on Friday. Based on numbers released Friday by university President Eric Barron, that puts the quarantine capacity at 39% and the isolation capacity at 44%, although there are an additional 140 spaces if necessary and the university has confirmed it will seek spaces in downtown hotels if more are required.
Although the university has said quarantine and isolation spaces are technically for both on- and off-campus students, off-campus students typically quarantine and isolate in their own residences.
Michelle Rodino-Colocino, Penn State president of the American Association of University Professors, said the university has fallen short when it comes to protecting the community’s health and safety.
“The AAUP calls for Penn State to to take much bolder steps to stop the spread of COVID at our campuses and in our communities,” she told the Centre Daily Times. “We need to increase testing and isolation now and plan for a more robust pre-arrival testing program if we are to welcome people back to campus again during the spring semester.”
Barron has pointed to three different metrics as the most important in battling the pandemic: quarantine and isolation spaces, community transmission, and hospital capacity. Many experts also cited community transmission and hospital capacity as the most integral — but there’s disagreement over where Centre County stands with those two points.
The university believes community transmission is minimal — neighboring ZIP codes haven’t seen rates skyrocket at the same pace as the State College area — while Dr. David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, believes past increased testing positivity rates in neighboring counties suggest transmission has already happened on a noticeable level.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-diseases expert at Johns Hopkins, also told the CDT last week that high testing positivity rates in college towns/counties typically suggest community spread.
According to the state’s early warning monitoring system, which was last updated Friday, there is some cause for concern. Centre County now has the commonwealth’s worst incidence rate, with 322.5 infections per 100,000 residents over the past seven days. And it also has the state’s worst positivity rate at 12.1%.
“We start to worry when it gets above 10%,” Adalja added.
Similarly, the state Department of Health has also pinpointed Centre County as a problem area. A pop-up site at the Nittany Mall will administer up to 500 free daily tests, starting Friday by appointment. And Dr. Rachel Levine, the secretary of health, addressed the county’s cases last week.
“I have directed my staff to assist Centre County in identifying localized containment and mitigation efforts to reduce the spread and facilitate communications between large employers, county officials and local governments,” Levine said in a written statement.
From March to mid-August, before the official Penn State student move-in, the county had 392 total cases of the coronavirus. Since then, it’s added another 1,639 cases — with most coming in the State College area.
Still, hospitalizations at the Mount Nittany Medical Center remain low. That’s not a surprise to the experts, who say hospitalizations typically lag 3-6 weeks behind a spike in cases, but it’s certainly not a negative that just a single patient is currently hospitalized, according to the state’s hospital preparedness dashboard.
“We have been extremely fortunate so far that the rapid rise in cases locally has not translated to growth of hospitalizations,” Dr. Nirmal Joshi, chief medical officer of Mount Nittany Health, told the CDT over the weekend. “However, this can change very quickly. We are gathering information and monitoring local trends daily.
“The overall growth in cases is cause for significant concern. As a community, we must absolutely work to keep our numbers from continuing to grow at this rate.”
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has been minimal relative to University Park. To date, there have been 70 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (23), Erie (15), Hershey (15), Shenango (4), Abington (2), Berks (2), Brandywine (2), Harrisburg (2), Hazleton (2), New Kensington (1), Schuylkill (1) and Scranton (1).
Because Altoona has added 17 known positive cases since Sept. 11, the university established a pop-up on-demand testing center there over the weekend.
One Penn State employee so far, at University Park, has tested positive through the university.
Penn State’s next update to its COVID-19 dashboard will occur sometime Friday, and the university will host a virtual “town hall” at 3 p.m. Wednesday on COVID-19.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 3:07 PM.
