Lock Haven University to suspend in-person classes for 2 weeks, citing COVID-19 uptick
Lock Haven University, a public university 40 miles northeast of Penn State, is pausing the semester after blaming off-campus gatherings for a significant uptick in COVID-19 cases.
The university, home to about 3,000 undergraduates, will move all of its instruction online for about a two-week period starting Wednesday. The announcement came Tuesday afternoon, after LHU saw at least 30 positive cases since Aug. 24 and watched its positive case rate soar.
During that two-week period, the dining hall will be open for grab-and-go only, the library will remain open for pick-up only, and all other campus facilities (besides the residence halls) will be closed.
“This situation should demonstrate to everyone the insidious nature of COVID-19, its infectivity and the critical nature of individual personal responsibility,” university President Robert Pignatello said in a written statement. “We have determined that off-campus gatherings in confined areas where social distancing and mask wearing were not practiced is the culprit here.”
According to LHU, one key metric that pushed it online was the positive case rate. Lock Haven previously said its positivity rate needed to stay below 5% — meaning fewer than 5% of tests needed to come back positive — to provide a safe learning environment. When that rate reached 4.9% Tuesday morning, Pignatello sounded the alarm and moved to remote instruction.
The move comes in spite of Lock Haven taking additional precautions in late July.
At that time, the small university on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River announced that as many as 85% of classes would move to online-only instruction while it aimed to reduce on-campus residency by about two-thirds (to 283 students). Only one student per residence hall room was permitted.
Last week, the university took further steps by forbidding guests or visitors in on-campus housing and Evergreen Commons. Additional asymptomatic testing was also conducted.
It still wasn’t enough.
“I urge everyone to recognize our collective vulnerability to this virus and our individual roles in keeping the campus (and) greater community safe,” Pignatello added. “We must do better.”
According to the university, students have the option to return home for the two weeks of remote learning or to remain in their campus residence halls. Those who have tested positive, or have been in contact with someone who has tested positive, will be asked to go into quarantine or isolation.
Face-to-face classes will resume again Sept. 21. Any students or employees who wish to get tested before classes resume can do so between Sept. 16-17. Test results will then be processed before Sept. 21.
According to the state Department of Health, Clinton County (pop: 38,632) has experienced 137 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic — 121 confirmed and 16 probable.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 5:34 PM.
