Penn State Reports 352 More COVID-19 Cases Among University Park Students

Penn State reported on Tuesday 352 additional COVID-19 cases among students attending University Park since the school’s last update on Friday.

The additional positives bring the campus community’s total to 2,476 since Aug. 7, including one employee case, according to Penn State’s updated COVID-19 dashboard. However, 1,775 have completed isolation and are no longer considered active cases.

Tuesday’s new cases include results from testing between Friday and Sunday as well as as results that were previously pending for the week of Sept. 18-24.

From Friday through Sunday there were a total of 96 new positives. Those included 92 positives from 595 completed on-demand tests, with another 146 tests still awaiting results. Random testing yielded four positives from 716 completed tests, with 387 more still awaiting results.

For Sept. 18-24, an additional 252 cases — 246 on-demand and six random — were reported since Friday’s update, bringing that week’s total to 689. The total included 664 positives from 3,251 completed on-demand tests and 25 positives from 3,323 completed random tests.

The other four positives reported on Tuesday were from the week of Sept. 11-17.

Many of the new 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, so it’s unclear when exactly cases have been added to the DOH totals.

According to the updated dashboard, 123 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.

No new positives were reported among faculty or staff.

Penn State student cases continue to drive Centre County’s position as Pennsylvania’s biggest COVID-19 hotspot. Since Sept. 1, the Department of Health has reported 2,176 new cases in Centre County, more than four times the number of positives it had for the months of March through August combined. The vast majority have been in the State College and University Park zip codes.

According the Department of Health’s COVID-19 early warning monitoring dashboard, which was updated on Friday, Centre County once again had the highest incidence rate in the state for the past seven days at 350.1 per 100,000 people, up from 322.5 the prior week. The next closest county is Northumberland at 120.8. 

It’s the third consecutive week Centre County has had the highest incidence rate in the state.

The county also once again had the highest positivity rate in Pennsylvania at 12%, down slightly from 12.1% the previous week.

State College Area School District administrators, however, said on Thursday that students would return to in-person K-12 classes this week because local data has shown low incidence rates in the community outside of the college-aged population.

According to the school district, data from the last month provided by community health providers showed low positivity rates and overall case numbers. Geisinger reported a 3.0 percent positivity rate from its 434 tests of people in the district zip codes from Sept. 1-23 — a total of 13 cases. Mount Nittany Health reported 1.1 percent positivity rate from its 2,598 tests of people in the district zip codes since Aug. 26 — a total of 29 cases.

Hospitalizations also have remained relatively low. As of Tuesday, six COVID-19 patients are hospitalized at Mount Nittany Medical Center, up from five on Monday.