Updated: Friday, August 28 at 5:34 p.m.
Penn State updated its COVID-19 dashboard for the first week of fall semester classes Friday. It shows 28 new positive cases from a total of 4,664 tests conducted this week.
Symptomatic testing and asymptomatic surveillance testing on students each showed 14 new positive cases this week, with 27 of those on the University Park campus. The remaining case is listed on the Behrend campus in Erie. The dashboard said 160 students with symptoms were tested and 35 are still awaiting results.
Students who tested positive are in isolation, Penn State said in a release Friday. Case managers are assigned to work with students to ensure they’re supported. The university said it has initiated its contact tracing and quarantine process, which is in coordination with the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
The university performed 4,474 asymptomatic tests on students this week. Of those, 3,103 came back negative and 1,357 others are pending.
Thirty new asymptomatic tests were performed on employees this week. All were negative except for one, which is awaiting result.
Since Aug. 7, there have been a total of 31 positive cases from 5,279 tests.
Penn State had planned to conduct about 700 surveillance tests on students, faculty and staff across campuses daily. The numbers reported Friday meet 92% of that goal.
University Health Services on University Park campus has the capacity to conduct an average of 100 symptomatic tests per day, on site, according to the release Friday. Results are typically available in about an hour. Penn State said UHS has also expanded the number of negative pressure isolation rooms from two to 11.
“With contact tracing and our efforts in quarantine and isolation, we believe we can limit the virus’ spread,” Penn State President Eric Barron said in the statement. “I can’t emphasize enough that we must maintain our focus on our health guidelines.”
The university also updated information on pre-arrival testing. It reported 147 positive results, one less than last week, from 20,914 tests performed on students. Six out of 811 employees tested positive in their pre-arrival testing.
The university plans to update the dashboard every Friday.
