Penn State’s total number of covid-19 cases at University Park increased by 458 on Tuesday, boosting the total number of positives to 1,146.
According to data from the university’s dashboard, 100 students tested positive between Friday and Monday while another 358 students tested positive from pending results that were updated by Tuesday.
Despite the increase, Penn State President Eric Barron maintained that students would continue in-person learning.
“We continue to monitor many factors beyond our daily testing results, including local hospitalizations, spread from our student body to employees and the community, and our quarantine and isolation capacity, among many others,” Barron said. “At this time, these variables remain in our favor and we can continue our on-campus activities.”
The faculty-based group Coalition for a Just University (CJU), however, said it’s time for the university to go entirely remote.
“We’re now exceeding by many times the number of new symptomatic cases (10 per day) that the recently released ‘executive summary’ of Penn State’s own Health Resources Task Group indicated back in June as the threshold for going entirely remote,” said Sarah Townsend, an organizer for CJU. “At this point the Penn State administration isn’t holding itself accountable to any scientific research and recommendations, including its own. This is an academic institution, but it’s behaving in a way that would be unacceptable for faculty and students.”
The state Department of Health revealed Tuesday that Centre County added 212 new cases of coronavirus — a single-day record — the county has now reported 963 of its 1,449 total cases in September. Penn State’s University Park campus began testing Aug. 7, and started class Aug. 24.
