Penn State’s COVID-19 case count increases by 352 since last update, boosting total to 2,476
For the seventh 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 352 new cases since Friday’s update, bringing the total number of infected to 2,476. (Some 1,775 cases are no longer active, based on university estimates.)
From Friday to Sunday, 92 students tested positive for the virus out of the 595 on-demand tests with results, while four students tested positive out of the 716 random-screened tests with results. Some 264 on-demand tests since Aug. 28 still have results pending, while another 592 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’s update. Friday-Sunday’s positives also do not include the new results from old pending tests, which explains the other additional positive cases since the last update.
Some 123 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation, while another 60 are in quarantine — an overall decrease from 143 and 57, respectively, on Friday. Based on numbers recently released by university President Eric Barron, that puts the quarantine capacity at 49% and the isolation capacity at 40%, 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.
Barron has repeatedly pointed to three 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 transmission has been minimal and, according to testing data released by the State College Area School District, Mount Nittany Health has seen a 1.1% positivity rate from Aug. 26 to Sept. 24 among people in district ZIP codes. However, Dr. David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has said past increased testing positivity rates in neighboring counties suggest transmission already happened on a noticeable level — and there has been noticeable case increases in other areas of Centre County, although they haven’t occurred anywhere near the scale of University Park or State College.
Hospitalizations at the Mount Nittany Medical Center also remain low for now — although they are currently on the rise, according to the data. A Mount Nittany spokesperson told the CDT on Sept. 18 that it had seen just four COVID-positive patients admitted at that point in the month but, according to the state’s hospital preparedness dashboard, there are now six patients simultaneously hospitalized.
Penn State’s rising case counts in every dashboard update haven’t sat well with Sarah Townsend, an organizer of the faculty-based group Coalition for a Just University.
“The number of positive cases has grown each week,” Townsend said in a written statement. “We are now heading into cooler weather and the legal capacity for in-person dining and bar service has raised to 50% — two factors that could contribute to an increase in cases.
“The Penn State administration is patting itself on the back because the hospital is not yet overwhelmed and community spread has not yet reached overwhelming levels, but in the meantime, local residents are forced to hide out in their houses to avoid contagion, and no consideration is being given to the long-term health effects of COVID-19 that experts have warned are possible even in young people who show no serious symptoms.”
Based on the state’s early warning monitoring system, which is clearly impacted by the student population, there remains cause for concern. Centre County’s overall incidence rate and positivity rate remain the highest in the commonwealth. By far.
The monitoring system, which is updated every Friday, shows the county’s incidence rate currently stands at 350.1 infections per 100,000 residents over the previous seven days — compared to second-worst Northumberland County’s 120.8 incidence rate. Centre County’s positivity rate is also 12%, although it was at 12.1% the previous update.
The state Department of Health pinpointed the county as an area of concern two weeks ago, and a free pop-up testing site — that can test up to 500 daily — was implemented Friday at the Nittany Mall.
“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,” Secretary of Health Rachel 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 2,275 cases — with most coming in the State College area.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has varied. An outbreak has occurred at Altoona, where 42 new cases have been reported since Friday’s update — although the university said in a news release that, due to increased targeted testing, more cases were anticipated. (There were no new cases from limited testing between Friday and Sunday; the new cases came from past pending tests.)
To date, there have been 172 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (121), Erie (19), Hershey (15), Berks (4), Harrisburg (3), Brandywine (2), Hazleton (2), Beaver (1), DuBois (1), Fayette (1), New Kensington (1), Schuylkill (1) and Scranton (1).
One Penn State employee so far, at University Park, has tested positive through the university.
The case counts reported by the county, via the state Department of Health, and Penn State often don’t match up because the university has acknowledged there is some lag between when it reports the numbers to the state DOH and when the state DOH releases the numbers publicly.
Penn State’s next update to its COVID-19 dashboard will occur sometime Friday, and the university will host a virtual “town hall” at 2 p.m. Sunday on COVID-19.
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 2:57 PM.
