Students in 3 More Penn State Residence Halls Advised to Get Tested for COVID-19

University health officials on Monday advised Penn State students living in Beaver, Geary and Packer Halls to get tested for COVID-19, the third time in less than a week that residents of specific dorms have been told to do so.

As with two advisories last week for four other residence halls, Monday’s advisory was issued “out of an abundance of caution,” after “several” students living in the two residence halls tested positive.

Students living in the three halls were encouraged to go for walk-up testing on Monday and Tuesday at Pegula Ice Arena, where rapid tests are administered to provide immediate results. If a rapid test indicates a positive result, students will take a PCR test to confirm and be directed to isolation. The university also will initiate contact tracing.

Students who receive a negative on the PCR will be given information about leaving isolation, while those who test positive will complete a 10-day isolation period that includes university support services.

Geary and Packer halls are located in the East Halls complex, where on Wednesday students living in Hastings and Stone halls students were encouraged to get tested. Two days later, students in Earle and Martin halls received a similar advisory.

Beaver Hall is located in the Pollock complex.

The university did not specify how many students in any of the seven residence halls tested positive.

Over the past week the University Park campus has seen an uptick in student cases, with 245 positives and a 3.8% positivity rate from March 15-21, according to the most recent update of Penn State’s COVID-19 dashboard. It’s the highest weekly increase since November.

From Monday through Friday of last week, the campus averaged nearly 47 new student positives per day and had no fewer than 33 positives in a single day during that span. Since the start of spring semester in-person classes in February, the previous single-day high for new positives was 21 on March 10.