Penn State reported 136 new COVID-19 positives among students and two among employees at University Park in its semi-weekly update on Tuesday.
After seeing a brief downward trend in new positives — with consecutive updates of fewer than 100 — cases at the campus have slowly increased again over the past week, though not at the same dramatic rate as in September.
“We are seeing the number of positive results increase slightly and we are watching this carefully,” Penn State President Eric Barron said in a 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.’
The latter has caused heightened concern with the start of the Penn State football season. Multiple large gatherings of more than 100 people, with little social distancing or mask wearing, were reported at downtown apartment complexes. State College police dispersed those gatherings and are now looking to identify those involved to issue citations for violations of the borough’s COVID-19 ordinance. The university also plans to discipline those involved for student conduct violations.
The gatherings drew condemnation for Barron, who called them ‘reckless and irresponsible,’ and he said the university would work with borough officials and apartment managers throughout the rest of the season to put a stop to them
‘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,” Barron said on Tuesday.
The new positives reported in the university’s updated COVID-19 dashboard bring the the campus community’s total to 3,795 since Aug. 7, including 13 employee cases. However, 279 of those are still considered active, with 3,516 having completed isolation and no longer considered active cases.
Between Friday and Sunday, on-demand testing yielded 37 student positives from 244 completed tests, with another 126 awaiting results. Four positives resulted from 635 completed random screening tests with another 166 still pending
An additional 95 student positives — 88 from on-demand tests and seven from random screening — were reported from tests that were previously pending for the week of Oct. 16-21. For that week, there was a total of 235 positives — 215 from 1,871 completed on-demand tests and 20 from 3,045 completed random screening tests.
Weekly results of Penn State student COVID-19 testing as of Oct. 27, 2020.
According to the updated dashboard, 63 students are currently in on-campus isolation and 37 are in on-campus quarantine. University Park has 250 rooms available for isolation, 150 for quarantine and another 140 available if needed. Students may also isolate and quarantine at home or if they have suitable space off-campus residence, according to the university.
Some of the newly reported university cases have likely already appeared in the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s daily COVID-19 reporting for Centre County. Penn State updates its dashboard only twice a week, and the health department does not distinguish student testing results in publicly available data, so it’s unclear when exactly cases have been added to the DOH totals.
Corresponding to the slower growth in new cases at Penn State, Centre County’s overall new positives have been lower over the past two weeks, with 552 between Oct. 13 and Tuesday compared to 878 the prior two weeks.
However, COVID-19 hospitalizations at Mount Nittany Medical Center have been growing. On Tuesday, the hospital had 16 COVID inpatients, a record high. That’s as many as it had for the entire month of September, when it averaged two COVID inpatients per day.
Mount Nittany activated its surge capacity its surge capacity plan on Oct. 9 and over the last two weeks COVID-19 inpatient cases have consistently been in the double digits, a trend Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nirmal Joshi called concerning.
On Friday, the hospital’s 15 COVID inpatients at the time ranged in age from 23 to 95. The majority were elderly, according to Mount Nittany.
‘Although recently reported trends reflecting a decline in overall community cases is encouraging, increased cases and hospitalizations among vulnerable elderly populations is cause for concern,’ Joshi said. ‘It is also a reminder to be even more vigilant and thoughtful in consistently practicing preventive measures, including masking, social distancing and frequent hand washing.”
After more than a month of having the highest of any county in Pennsylvania, Centre County’s incidence rate also has continued to drop. For the last week, the county had an incidence rate of 125.3 cases per 100,000 people, ninth highest in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s early warning monitoring dashboard. The county’s positivity rate also dropped to 4.9%, just below the statewide average of 5%.
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