Penn State’s COVID-19 cases hold steady as concern remains with county hospitalizations
Penn State’s new COVID-19 cases continue to increase at a slower rate compared to their peak — but, with increased county hospitalizations that featured 19 inpatients Tuesday, 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 86 new student cases since Friday’s update, bringing the total number of infected among students and employees to 3,968 — with 173 of those cases considered active, based on university estimates. No new employees tested positive.
“While our positive test numbers have been holding relatively steady in recent weeks, rising case counts across Pennsylvania and the nation illustrate that we could very quickly begin trending in the wrong direction if we are not careful,” Kelly Wolgast, director of Penn State’s COVID-19 Operations Control Center, said in a written statement. “As we approach the end of the in-person portion of the fall semester, we ask our community to continue to remain committed to wearing masks, avoiding large gatherings, staying physically distant, practicing good hygiene, and following all guidelines.”
From Friday to Sunday, 26 students tested positive out of the 312 on-demand tests with results (with 18 tests since Oct. 16 still pending), while two students tested positive out of the 466 random-screened tests with results (with 300 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.
Despite the numbers not rising as sharply a they once were — there were more than 450 new cases during a late September update — officials aren’t resting easy. Barron, like most experts and officials, has 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 again Thursday those factors are not working in the county’s favor.
“We’re in the exponential growth phase of what’s occurring throughout the state, and things are going to get very difficult. Very quickly,” Rubin said. “Worse than we’ve seen thus far.”
According to the state’s hospital preparedness dashboard, Mount Nittany currently has 19 COVID-19 patients simultaneously hospitalized — compared to 16 total throughout the entire month of September. 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 can say now that the Penn State reopening did not go well,” Rubin added. “It has led to widespread community transmission throughout the central region of Pennsylvania, alongside other school reopenings.”
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 passed a resolution last month, 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 Friday, with testing offered Nov. 12-19 at University Park, although CJU/PSU has petitioned for such testing to be made mandatory — a move AAUP supports.
“We want to see them using the resources that we have to try to contribute to getting the pandemic under control instead of enabling the further spread of the virus,” Michelle Rodino-Colocino, AAUP chapter president, said last week.
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 3,964 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 starting to see key metrics move the wrong way after some good news two weeks ago. Centre County’s testing positivity rate rose to 6.1% Friday after reaching 4.9% the previous week and 5.6% the week before. The county’s incidence rate has also increased from last week, to 175.1 infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days compared to the previous week’s 125.
More than a month ago, Rubin projected the county’s numbers would decline before increasing once more. And he’s not predicting another decrease in the near future.
News has been mixed at Penn State’s different campuses. At University Park, the quarantine and isolation spaces remain less than half-full with 48 students currently in on-campus isolation for confirmed infections and another 67 in quarantine for potential infections — compared to 61 and 42, respectively, on Friday.
Elsewhere at Penn State, on other campuses, nine total students are in isolation and another 35 are in quarantine. To date, there have been 368 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.
Twenty Penn State employees so far — 13 at University Park, three at Altoona, one at Abington, one at Erie, one at New Kensington and one at York — 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.
