University Park Among Six Penn State Campuses to Drop Indoor Mask Mandate

Just three days after its indoor mask mandate went into effect, Penn State’s University Park campus is no longer requiring indoor masking, effective immediately, the university announced Friday.

Due to decreased Centers for Disease Control COVID-19 Community Levels in their respective counties, Penn State Great Valley, Lehigh Valley, New Kensington, Schuylkill and Scranton also won’t require masking while indoors, for the time being.

Penn State re-instituted the mask requirement in accordance with CDC recommendations at University Park after Centre County moved to the high community level on May 26.

Centre County, along with the counties of the five other campuses, are now experiencing medium COVID-19 Community Levels, at which the CDC does not recommend universal indoor masking.

The CDC’s county-by-county COVID-19 community levels are used to track of low (green), medium (yellow) or high (orange) levels based on new cases and new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people and percent of staffed hospital beds occupied by COVID inpatients over a seven-day period.

Centre County had a case rate of 216.5 and 9.5 new COVID admissions per 100,000 people, according to the CDC’s weekly update on Thursday night. Both were down from last week, while the 7.7% of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 inpatients was up from 5.7% last week.

• Green counties: CDC recommendations call for individuals to stay up-to-date on their vaccinations and to get tested if they have symptoms of COVID-19. 
• Yellow counties: The recommendations advise those who are at high risk for severe illness to talk to their healthcare provider about their individual need to wear a face mask. 
• Orange counties: CDC recommends all individuals wear a mask indoors. 

As of now, seven Penn State Commonwealth Campuses — Abington, Beaver, Behrend, Brandywine, Greater Allegheny, Hazleton and Wilkes-Barre — will continue to enforce the indoor masking policy, as their respective counties are still maintaining high COVID-19 levels. The status of each county’s COVID-19 Community Levels is updated every Thursday by the CDC.

While University Park paused operations of its testing clinic on May 13, students who are showing symptoms of COVID-19 can still get tested through myUHS.