Penn State’s COVID-19 cases increase slightly as concern remains with parties, hospitalizations
Penn State’s new COVID-19 cases continue to increase at a slower rate compared to their peak — but, with several large student gatherings over the weekend and increased county hospitalizations, concern and caution remain.
According to data from the university’s COVID-19 dashboard, which is updated twice weekly, the University Park campus has added 136 new student cases since Friday’s update, bringing the total number of infected among students and employees to 3,795 — with 279 of those cases considered active, based on university estimates. Two new employees also tested positive.
The update comes a day after university President Eric Barron chastised hundreds of students for violating local ordinances and Penn State policy by gathering in large groups Saturday at Here State College, The Rise at State College and Penn Tower during the season football opener. It also comes the same day Mount Nittany Medical Center reached a new pandemic-high with 16 simultaneous COVID-19 hospitalizations.
“We are seeing the number of positive results increase slightly and we are watching this carefully,” Barron said in a written statement. “As we discussed during our webinar last week, now is the time to double down on our efforts in masking, social distancing and avoiding large gatherings. Every single Penn Stater needs to act responsibly and take these simple measures over the next few weeks so that we can keep our local communities safe, minimize this increase and send our students home healthy on Nov. 20.”
From Friday to Sunday, 37 students tested positive out of the 244 on-demand tests with results (with 154 tests since Oct. 9 still pending), while four students tested positive out of the 635 random-screened tests with results (with 183 tests pending).
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.
Some 63 University Park students are now in on-campus isolation for confirmed infections, while another 37 are in quarantine for potential infections — compared to 57 and 47, respectively, on Friday.
Despite the numbers not rising as sharply a they once were — there were more than 450 new cases during a late September update — there remains cause for concern in Centre County. 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, recently told the Centre Daily Times those factors are not working in the county’s favor.
According to the state’s hospital preparedness dashboard, Mount Nittany currently has 16 COVID-19 patients hospitalized — compared to four total from Sept. 1-18. That suggests transmission has spilled over to the non-student community, Rubin said, a concerning sign since the hospital has already implemented its Surge Capacity Plan and the infection rate is only expected to get worse with winter.
“I don’t want to understate it,” Rubin recently told the CDT, “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.
The university has also announced it will test all students who want to be tested prior to leaving for Thanksgiving break Nov. 20. Students can book a testing appointment by Nov. 6, with testing offered Nov. 12-19 at University Park.
“We’re still concerned about the health and safety of everyone at Penn State, of faculty, staff and students,” Michelle Rodino-Colocino, AAUP chapter president and university professor, said last week. “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 3,705 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% the previous 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 125.3 infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days, which is a decrease from the previous week’s 188.
“This is not the moment with the winter coming to declare an end to this,” Rubin added.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, the impact of COVID-19 has varied. To date, there have been 335 total cases at campuses outside of the main campus: Altoona (219), Erie (28), Harrisburg (20), Hershey (19), Scranton (13), Berks (11), Abington (5), Brandywine (3), Fayette (3), Mont Alto (3), New Kensington (3), Schuylkill (3), Beaver (2), Hazleton (2), DuBois (1) and Lehigh Valley (1). Altoona, which had an outbreak several weeks ago, had three new cases from Friday to Sunday.
Eighteen Penn State employees so far — 13 at University Park, three at Altoona, one at Abington 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 Friday.
