Penn State adds 196 more COVID-19 cases at University Park since last update, increasing total to 3,166
Penn State has added 196 new COVID-19 cases among University Park students and employees since the last dashboard update, putting Friday’s official case total at 3,166.
Based on university estimates, 546 of those cases are still considered active.
From last Friday to Thursday, according to the twice-weekly COVID-19 dashboard update, 278 students tested positive for the virus out of the 1,825 on-demand tests with results, while another nine students tested positive out of the 2,536 random-screened tests with results. Two University Park employees have also tested positive over that same time period.
Some 453 on-demand tests for students and employees still have results pending since Sept. 18, while another 359 random-screened tests remain pending.
“As we noted on Tuesday, we are continuing to see declines in our positive test results; however, it would be premature to draw conclusions about wider trends,” university President Eric Barron said in a written statement. “It remains our goal to reduce the virus’ spread through a comprehensive, community-wide effort.”
Some 136 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation, while another 60 are in quarantine — an overall increase from 110 and 46, respectively, on Tuesday. Based on numbers recently released by Barron, that puts the quarantine capacity at 54% 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.
Still, the case counts have continued to cause concern. Penn State’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution Thursday calling on the university to provide more COVID-19 testing, greater transparency and universal pre-arrival testing before the spring semester — requests that have been echoed by several other faculty- and student-based groups, such as the American Association of University Professors and the Coalition for a Just University.
“AAUP calls for transparency at all levels,” said Michelle Rodino-Colocino, the group’s chapter president. “We support the resolution that was just passed by the Faculty Senate (Thursday) calling for transparency and full testing of everyone returning back to campus in the spring, if that happens.”
Added Sarah Townsend, a CJU/PSU organizer: “The number of positive cases seems to be declining for the moment, but it’s still very high and other universities have done a far superior job of decreasing their case counts and positivity rates. ... Penn State administrators need to shake off their complacency and dramatically increase testing now.”
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 is headed with those last two points.
The university believes transmission has been minimal so far, and not without reason. According to a Penn State research project, dubbed “Data 4 Action,” 2.2% of the tested population in the Centre Region had a positive antibody test that indicated possible prior exposure to the virus. That’s meaningful because, during a presentation Monday night to the State College Borough Council, researchers explained the rate of those positive tests has remained relatively consistent, suggesting the community outside Penn State has been minimally impacted.
But others aren’t convinced. One of the authors of Coalition for a Just University’s COVID-19 simulation report pointed out the project is not truly random, with volunteers likely more health-conscious and less likely to contract the virus than the average Centre County resident. And, regardless of current transmission, Dr. David Rubin — director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — believes the county is in a highly precarious position because of Penn State’s numbers and because data suggests infections increase over winter.
“What I’m not seeing is the improvements in Centre County,” Rubin told the Centre Daily Times last week. “I’m seeing this thing march along and, as it gets colder out there, at some point it spills over in the community and starts to race. ... I’m just not sure how much in the know, how much control, the university really has over this in Centre County. And, if I was a Centre County resident, that’s concerning.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations at the Mount Nittany Medical Center are also rising and have reached a pandemic high with 13 simultaneous patients Friday. Mount Nittany Health announced Friday that it is moving toward its Surge Capacity Plan, which means rescheduling non-essential/elective procedures and surgeries that require overnight admission — a move that Amesh Adalja, an an infectious-diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins, told the CDT last month was a warning sign.
A Mount Nittany spokesperson told the CDT on Sept. 19 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 were eight patients last Friday. Mount Nittany said the 13 current patients are mostly from long-term care facilities.
“It’s time to shut down in-person classes today,” Rodino-Colocino said, upon seeing the hospitalizations. “At Penn State and clearly in State College School District.”
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 both fell but still remain among the highest in the commonwealth. (Rubin predicted as much two weeks ago, when he said he expected the county’s numbers to tail off before rising once more.)
The monitoring system, which is updated every Friday, shows the county’s incidence rate currently stands at a state-worst 278.9 infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days — a decrease from the previous week’s 291.1. Centre County’s positivity rate is also a third-worst 7.4%, although it was a state-worst 9.4% last week.
The state Department of Health pinpointed the county as an area of concern three weeks ago, and a free pop-up testing site — that can test up to 440 daily — was extended Tuesday and will continue through Saturday 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 last month 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 2,930 cases — with most coming in the State College area.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has varied. To date, there have been 235 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (157), Erie (22), Hershey (18), Scranton (12), Berks (5), Harrisburg (4), Abington (3), Fayette (3), New Kensington (3), Beaver (2), Brandywine (2), Hazleton (2) and Schuylkill (2). Altoona, which had an outbreak several weeks ago, had eight new cases this past week.
Eight Penn State employees so far — seven at University Park, one at New Kensington — have 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 Tuesday.
