COVID-19 cases have engulfed Pennsylvania. Here’s what it means for Centre County
Dr. David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has been able to boast about his COVID-19 model’s “deadly accuracy” for months. Until last week.
Even he acknowledged he couldn’t predict, beforehand, the tsunami of infections that started hitting Pennsylvania last week — and Centre County is no exception.
“With the holiday about eight days out, we are looking at a significant crisis right now,” Rubin told the Centre Daily Times on Monday. “I think Pennsylvania is going to have the eyes of the nation on us soon.”
The rise in the coronavirus came quickly. On Nov. 3, the commonwealth added 2,875 new cases for a single-day high since the pandemic’s start. It turns out those totals would be a reprieve: The results from the last six daily updates ranged between 4,400 and nearly 6,000 cases.
Signs of the increase have been everywhere. Hospitalizations in the state have nearly doubled in two weeks. Fifty-nine of 67 counties have “substantial” levels of COVID-19, per Gov. Tom Wolf. The National Guard has been called into a Mechanicsburg long-term care facility after staff infections nearly tripled in a week. And, bracing for the worst, Philadelphia officials have already again begun implementing a shutdown.
“This is closer to the kitchen table than it’s ever been,” Rubin added. “Every decision a community makes now, or an individual family makes now, is going to have an impact.”
What this means for Centre County
Two weeks ago, Rubin expressed a cautious optimism over Centre County, acknowledging the virus is typically worse in the winter but believing Penn State students’ Nov. 20 departure would de-densify the county and allow it to weather the pandemic better than other counties, at least in December.
But “optimistic” isn’t a word Rubin used Monday.
Yes, students leaving campus should still help the Centre Region. And, yes, the county could still recover quicker than places like Philadelphia or Lancaster, Rubin said. But transmission has spilled over to the non-student community, and “I just don’t know what the peak is right now for Centre,” Rubin added.
The numbers are startling, and the future is unclear. Although Penn State has accounted for an overwhelming majority of cases in the county, that trend was defied a bit last week. Although comparing county and university cases is imperfect due to lag and other variables, the county conservatively more than doubled the university’s cases since Nov. 6.
Local rates in nursing homes continue to increase. Wingate Elementary shut down again Tuesday after an outbreak. And county coroner Scott Sayers acknowledged eleven new COVID-19 deaths since last Thursday.
“It’s not good,” Rubin added. “You’re in a very significant crisis because your bed availability in Centre County is much lower than it is elsewhere.”
Mount Nittany Medical Center was down to 11 hospitalizations Friday. But, on Tuesday, it was back up to 20 hospitalizations, according to data provided by the hospital.
“You’re at winter transmission, higher inoculants, and many more people of all ages have it,” Rubin said. “And they’re about to sit down at the Thanksgiving table. You couldn’t ask for a worse moment.”
What comes next
The specter of the Thanksgiving holiday has epidemiologists across the U.S. concerned how cases and hospitalizations might spike within two weeks of Nov. 26.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research center from the University of Washington, projects that Pennsylvania will run out of ICU beds sometime in mid-December. It also anticipates the state’s daily death count roughly tripling before the New Year, to about 98.
Rubin’s COVID model, which takes a closer look at four-week county projections, will be released Wednesday.
“This is the top of the mountain we’re about to climb,” Rubin said. “Right now, it’s like everyone collectively needs to jump on board right now and really buckle down.”
According to the Associated Press, Pennsylvania now has a rolling 23.1% positivity rate, which makes it the eighth hardest-hit state in the country. Others include Wyoming (62.9%), South Dakota (57.5%), Iowa (51.7%), Idaho (42%), Kansas (40.9%), Montana (24.6%) and Alabama (23.8%). By population, Pennsylvania is more than twice as large as any of the other most impacted states.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced five weeks ago he was eschewing the family get-together for Thanksgiving this year. MIT Technology Review published an article Saturday titled, “It’s not too late to cancel Thanksgiving.” And Georgia Tech created a tool that allows you to gauge local COVID risk at Thanksgiving. (Per the tool, there is a 17% chance at least one COVID-19 positive individual would be present at a 10-person dinner in Centre County.)
COVID-19 is bad right now, experts say, but it’s only going to get worse. And masking, social distancing and hand-washing remain the country’s (and the county’s) best hope until two promising vaccines might be deployed — which will occur as early as the spring.
“The challenge is today. It’s what you do,” Rubin said. “We can talk about how we got here, but what really matters is how we can interrupt as much transmission as we can over the next 4-6 weeks so that we can get ourselves past the peak and start declining again.”
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 2:20 PM.
