Penn State’s COVID-19 case count increases by 196 since last update, increasing total to 3,362 cases
Penn State has added 196 new COVID-19 cases among University Park students and employees since the last dashboard update, boosting Tuesday’s official case total to 3,362.
Based on university estimates, 405 of those cases are still considered active.
From Friday to Sunday, according to the twice-weekly COVID-19 dashboard update, 45 students tested positive out of the 421 on-demand tests with results (with 160 tests since Sept. 25 still pending), while one student tested positive out of the 816 random-screened tests with results (with 286 tests pending). No new employees tested positive.
Because of the way testing is now done, the random-screened tests often won’t show positives until Friday’s update. The number of Friday-Sunday cases listed directly above also do not include the new results from old pending tests, which explains the other additional positive cases since the last update.
“We are seeing our positive test results decline from their peak in mid-September; however, this virus is easily transmitted and, as we have seen elsewhere, progress can be reversed quickly,” Kelly Wolgast, director of Penn State’s COVID-19 Operations Control Center, said in a written statement. “We ask all in our community to continue to be diligent about following public health guidance and responsive to the university’s calls to participate in surveillance testing.”
Some 117 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation for confirmed infections, while another 63 are in quarantine for potential infections — an overall decrease from 136 and 60, respectively, on Friday. Based on numbers released by university President Eric Barron, that puts the isolation capacity at 47% and the quarantine capacity at 42%, 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.
Most off-campus students choose to quarantine and isolate from their own residences.
Several faculty- and student-based groups have repeatedly expressed concern over the continued cases and the notion the university hasn’t done enough to mitigate the spread. Penn State’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution just last week, 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 groups such as the American Association of University Professors and the Coalition for a Just University.
“We still think all the same measures need to be implemented,” said Sarah Townsend, an organizer for CJU/PSU. “Certainly, Penn State shouldn’t rest on its laurels. ... Other universities have controlled their outbreaks much more successfully, and we know by now that these things can reverse quickly. Now’s not the time for complacency.”
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, with widespread unease about the future of both.
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 as of last week that indicated possible prior exposure to the virus. That’s meaningful because, during a presentation last week to the State College Borough Council, researchers explained the rate of those positive tests has remained relatively consistent, suggesting the community outside Penn State had been minimally impacted at that point.
But others aren’t convinced. One of the co-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.
COVID-19 hospitalizations at the Mount Nittany Medical Center are also rising and currently stand at 12, according to the state’s hospital preparedness dashboard, after having reached a pandemic high Friday with 13 simultaneous patients. A spokesperson wrote to the CDT on Sept. 19 and said there were just four total hospitalizations at that point in the month; the same spokesperson issued a news release last week that said September saw 16 total hospitalizations.
Mount Nittany Health announced Friday that it has moved 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.
Dr. Nirmal Joshi, Mount Nittany Health’s chief medical officer, emphasized the need for the community’s continued cooperation again last week.
“Given the rise in cases in the county, we must be diligent with containment efforts in our personal lives and within the health system,” he said in a written statement. “We cannot become complacent. ... We need to remain vigilant, especially with respect to vulnerable populations, and as a health system, we must remain cautious and flexible, ensuring we have the ability to flex our capacity as needed.”
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 3,153 cases — with most coming in the State College area.
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 three 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 262.9 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 second-worst 7.6%, although it was a state-worst 9.4% in the previous update.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has varied. To date, there have been 291 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (199), Erie (22), Hershey (19), Harrisburg (13), Scranton (12), Berks (8), Abington (3), Fayette (3), New Kensington (3), Beaver (2), Brandywine (2), Hazleton (2), Schuylkill (2) and DuBois (1). Altoona, which had an outbreak several weeks ago, had 29 new cases since Oct. 2.
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 Friday.
This story was originally published October 13, 2020 at 7:14 PM.
