In its latest semi-weekly update on Friday, Penn State reported an additional 195 COVID-19 cases among students and one among employees at the University Park campus.
The new positives bring the the campus community’s total to 3,166 since Aug. 7, including seven employee cases, according to Penn State’s updated COVID-19 dashboard. However, 2,620 have completed isolation and are no longer considered active cases.
Friday’s numbers include 183 new student positives for the week of Oct. 2-8 since the university’s last update on Tuesday, bringing the total for the week to 287. The total includes 278 positives from 1,773 completed on-demand tests with another 450 still awaiting results. Random screening yielded nine positives from 2,505 completed tests, with 286 more still pending.
Two employees also tested positive in the past week: one out of 94 completed on-demand tests and one out of 199 completed random screening tests.
Additional cases reported on Friday were from test results still pending for prior weeks. In total for the week of Sept. 25-Oct. 1, there were a total of 488 student positives — 462 from on-demand tests and 26 from random screening — out of 6,079 completed tests. Four employees tested positive — one from on-demand tests and three from random screening — out of 505 completed tests.
“As we noted on Tuesday we are continuing to see declines in our positive test results, however, it would be premature to draw conclusions about wider trends,’ Penn State President Eric Barron said in a statement. ‘It remains our goal to reduce the virus’ spread through a comprehensive, community-wide effort.”
According to the updated dashboard, 136 students are currently in on-campus isolation and 60 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.
Many 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.
Barron said testing results and isolation/quarantine capacity are among multiple factors the university uses to determine next steps in its response to the pandemic. Among others, they also include hospital capacity.
On Friday, Mount Nittany Medical Center activated the first step of its ‘surge capacity plan,’ adjustments to its normal operations when it experiences a spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations. The medical center currently has 13 COVID-positive inpatients, ranging in age from 33 to 96, with seven coming from long-term care facilities. The first step of the plan is rescheduling elective and non-essential surgeries and procedures that require overnight admission.
While COVID-19 inpatients have increased, the hospital is not overwhelmed and in the spring developed a 21-bed specialized unit for COVID patients that is currently in use. Mount Nittany Health reported earlier this week that despite the surge in new cases locally since Penn State students returned for the fall semester overall patient volumes through the end of September have remained lower than the same time last year, an ongoing trend during the COVID-19 pandemic
‘Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been diligently monitoring COVID-19 cases in our community and planning our response if the number of hospitalized cases rose,’ Mount Nittany Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nirmal Joshi said in a statement. ‘The steps that we are taking now are prudent and realistic to ensure that we have the resources and care available for the people who need us.’
For the fifth consecutive week, Centre County has the highest incidence rate in the state, though the number continues to decline, according to DOH’s updated early-warning monitoring dashboard. For the week of Oct. 2-8, the county had an incidence rate of 278.9 cases per 100,000 people, down from 291.1 the previous week. The next closest county is Union at 207.7.
For the first time in a month, Centre County does not have the highest positivity rate in the state over the past seven days. The county’s positivity rate for the week was 7.4%, third-highest in the state and down from 9.4% the prior week.
State College Area School District, which monitors testing by community health providers as part of its decision-making process for continuing in-person classes, reported on Thursday that more than 1,500 tests performed over the past week in the county by Geisinger and Mount Nittany Health had a positivity rate of less than 2%.
