Penn State adds more than 100 COVID-19 cases since last update, increasing total count to 3,657
Penn State added 109 new COVID-19 cases among University Park students and employees since the last dashboard update — a slight increase in new cases — to boost Friday’s official case total to 3,657.
Based on university estimates, 238 of those cases are still considered active.
From last Friday to Thursday, according to the twice-weekly COVID-19 dashboard update, 127 students tested positive out of the 972 on-demand tests with results (with 143 tests since Oct. 2 still pending), while 13 students tested positive out of the 2,262 random-screened tests with results (with 371 tests pending). One employee tested positive during that same time frame.
“After a steady decrease, the slight uptick in the number of active cases serves as a reminder that the virus is still with us,” Penn State President Eric Barron stated in a Friday news release. “With our first football game taking place on Saturday, and with flu season upon us, it is especially critical that we remain diligent in our prevention behaviors so that we do not undo the progress we’ve made in recent weeks.”
Some 57 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation for confirmed infections, while another 47 are in quarantine for potential infections — compared to 52 and 48, respectively, on Tuesday. Based on numbers released by university President Eric Barron, that puts the isolation capacity at 23% and the quarantine capacity at 31%, 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.
Barron, like most experts and officials, has also pointed toward community transmission and hospital capacity as critical factors in fighting the pandemic. And Dr. David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Centre Daily Times those factors are not working in the county’s favor.
According to data provided by the Mount Nittany Medical Center, there are 15 patients hospitalized — a record number of COVID-19 inpatients at the hospital — ranging in age from 23 to 95. The hospital has already implemented its Surge Capacity Plan and winter, with its expected rise in cases, has not yet hit.
Rubin also pointed to the increase in hospitalizations as a result of wider transmission among the non-student community, saying “there’s no doubt about it.”
“Pennsylvania is rapidly devolving, moving very much in the direction of Michigan and Ohio, and Illinois and Wisconsin — and we may just be a few weeks behind,” Rubin said last week. “And you guys are already at surge capacity. So I don’t want to understate it: It’s a really concerning concept.”
Several faculty- and student-based groups have repeatedly expressed concern that the university hasn’t done enough to mitigate the spread. Penn State’s Faculty Senate recently passed a resolution, 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’re still concerned about the health and safety of everyone at Penn State, of faculty, staff and students,” said Michelle Rodino-Colocino, AAUP chapter president and university professor. “I know I’m seeing more coronavirus in the students I teach, and I’m concerned about their ability to get through the semester healthy and not bring it back to their parents.”
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 3,516 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, the county is performing better in several key metrics. Centre County’s testing positivity rate fell to 4.9% Friday after reaching 5.6% last week and exceeding 12% at its peak. The county’s incidence rate is also no longer the worst in the state — it’s the ninth-worst — after dropping to 125 infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days, which is a decrease from the previous week’s 188.
Over the last week, 1% of county emergency department visits were due to COVID-19 — which is a decrease over last week’s 2% and the previous week’s 1.7%. Still, Centre County’s decline in cases and testing positivity was projected about a month ago by Rubin, who expected numbers to tail off before rising again as temperatures dropped.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has varied. To date, there have been 326 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (213), Erie (28), Harrisburg (19), Hershey (19), Scranton (13), Berks (11), Abington (4), Fayette (3), New Kensington (3), Schuylkill (3), Beaver (2), Brandywine (2), Hazleton (2), Mont Alto (2), DuBois (1) and Lehigh Valley (1). Altoona, which had an outbreak several weeks ago, had four new cases this past week.
Fourteen Penn State employees so far — 11 at University Park, two at Altoona and 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.
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 6:03 PM.
