Penn State adds 93 more COVID-19 cases at University Park since last update, increasing total to 3,455
Penn State has added 93 new COVID-19 cases among University Park students and employees since the last dashboard update — the smallest increase since the first week of September — to boost Friday’s official case total to 3,455.
Based on university estimates, 334 of those cases are still considered active.
From last Friday to Thursday, according to the twice-weekly COVID-19 dashboard update, 129 students tested positive out of the 1,245 on-demand tests with results (with 505 tests since Sept. 25 still pending), while six students tested positive out of the 2,389 random-screened tests with results (with 228 tests pending). No new employees tested positive.
“I’m cautiously pleased to see that the data are showing a continued, steady decline in the number of positive tests among students at University Park,” Penn State President Eric Barron said in a written statement. “Public health officials are hopeful that the numbers are declining as a result of our community embracing preventative measures like masking and social distancing.
“However, the data may not be reflective of the virus dissipating on campus or in the surrounding community, so we all must continue to take these measures, particularly in light of the growing number of COVID-19 cases across the commonwealth.”
Some 91 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation for confirmed infections, while another 59 are in quarantine for potential infections — an overall decrease from 117 and 63, respectively, on Tuesday. Based on numbers released by Barron, that puts the isolation capacity at 36% and the quarantine capacity at 39%, 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 potential for more 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 have to act today to become a force in the stopping of the spread, not just managing the spread. Stopping it,” said Michelle Rodino-Colocino, AAUP chapter president. “I think doing the same thing in the next semester would be an act of negligence.”
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 had often expressed the belief that community transmission was minimal. But Dr. David Rubin — the director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — told the Centre Daily Times on Thursday that hospitalizations are increasing while the testing positivity rate is declining likely because demographics are shifting and COVID-19 has already spilled over to the greater community.
“There’s no doubt about it,” Rubin said. “That is why your hospitalizations are rising.”
According to the Mount Nittany Medical Center, there are currently 11 simultaneous COVID-19 patients hospitalized between the ages of 52 and 92 — a week after the hospital reached a pandemic-high 13 simultaneous hospitalizations. A Mount Nittany spokesperson also said there were 17 total hospitalizations this week alone, a notable increase from this time last month when there were four total hospitalizations between Sept. 1-18.
Mount Nittany Health announced last week that it 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 should sound an alarm for locals. Rubin agreed Thursday.
“I suspect this is a dangerous warning sign,” Rubin added.
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 3,258 cases — with most coming in the State College area.
Based on the state’s early warning monitoring system, which is updated every Friday and remains clearly impacted by the student population, news is mixed. Centre County’s testing positivity rate fell to 5.4% Friday after reaching 7.6% the week prior and exceeding 12% at its peak. The county’s incidence rate is also no longer the worst in the state — it’s the third-worst — after dropping to 188 infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days, which is a decrease from last week’s 278.9.
However, one key metric has increased. Over the last week, 2% of county emergency department visits were due to COVID-19 — which is an increase over last week’s 1.7%.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has varied. To date, there have been 308 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (206), Erie (27), Hershey (19), Harrisburg (17), Scranton (12), Berks (8), Abington (4), Fayette (3), New Kensington (3), Beaver (2), Brandywine (2), Hazelton (2), Schuylkill (2) and DuBois (1). Altoona, which had an outbreak several weeks ago, had seven 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.
