Penn State recommends covid-19 testing students as cases continue to rise

Centre Daily Times | Tuesday, March 23, 2021 11:07 p.m.

A student walks in front of the Old Main building on the Penn State campus in State College.

As cases of covid-19 continue rising on Penn State’s campus, the university has again — “out of an abundance of caution” — recommended that all students in three more dorms get tested.

Students living in Pollock’s Beaver Hall and the East’s Geary and Packer halls were urged Monday to either get tested that day or Tuesday at nearby Pegula Ice Arena, which is open for walk-up testing from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It is the university’s third such announcement over the last seven days.

Seven total dorms have now seen similar recommendations, with six coming from the East and one from Pollock. (The previously impacted dorms included Earle, Hastings, Martin and Stone.)

“The virus is still prevalent nearly everywhere, so we must keep masking, physically distancing from others and avoiding large gatherings,” Kelly Wolgast, director of the covid-19 Operations Control Center, said in a written statement last week. “Stay with your small pod of friends this spring. Answer your phone when our contact tracers call you.

“The next few weeks are critical to continuing our on-campus activities through the end of the semester.”

The university has not specified the number of infected students in any of those dorms, only offering that “several students” there tested positive. Still, the increase at University Park has been significant.

Over the most recent seven days of data, from March 15-21 per the university’s covid-19 dashboard, Penn State has seen 255 new covid-19 cases to go along with a 3.5% positivity rate. That’s more than double the cases from the previous seven days, as University Park added 114 new cases from March 8-14 and a 2% positivity rate.

That number is still nowhere near the fall when, for more than a month straight, more than 200 students were infected about every four days. But there is some cause for concern elsewhere in Centre County.

The county’s testing positivity rate increased Friday to 7%, from 4.4% the previous week. And Centre County’s incidence rate, the number of new infections per 100,000 residents, is now the third-highest in the state at 218.6 — behind only Monroe County (237.9) and Northampton County (232.6), per the commonwealth’s early warning monitoring system.

At Mount Nittany Medical Center, there are also currently 20 covid-19 positive inpatients, between the ages of 25 and 84. Again, that’s nowhere near the peak of 60-plus in December — but it is part of an undesirable trend.

“The past two weeks have seen an uptick of covid-19 cases in our community, and with it, a slow but steady increase in numbers of patients hospitalized due to covid,” said Dr. Tiffany Cabibbo, chief nursing officer and executive vice president of patient care services. “We are highly concerned by this trend.”

Any asymptomatic student who wants to be tested can walk-up to the Pegula Ice Arena or the Hintz Family Alumni Center for a rapid test, where results will be available in about 15 minutes. (Those who test positive will undergo a second test, a PCR test, and will be isolated if again positive.) Students with symptoms should schedule a testing appointment with University Health Services via myUHS.