Coronavirus Outbreaks Reported At PA Colleges

PENNSYLVANIA — As college students return to Pennsylvania campuses, hundreds of coronavirus cases have been reported at institutions across the state.

At Penn State, 27 students tested positive at the University Park campus from Aug. 21 to 27. The students are in isolation, and the University has initiated its contact tracing and quarantine process, officials said.

Additionally, one student at Penn State Behrend tested positive for COVID-19 and is in isolation.

More than 17,000 Penn State students from areas with a high prevalence of coronavirus had mandatory pre-arrival tests before classes resumed. Of those, 153 were positive and were directed to isolate. The process helped to reduce the number of asymptomatic people who returned to campus, information from the university said. Penn State has created a dashboard that shows the number of positive cases by week.

Over at Temple University, 103 positive cases of the virus were discovered after more than 5,000 tests were administered over the past two weeks. The positive cases have caused the school to pause most in-person learning through Sept. 11.

"Only those classes designated as essential by the dean of a school or college will be held in person during this period and students in those classes will be notified directly by their school or college," Temple President Richard Englert wrote in a letter to the school community on Sunday.

The university president said new virus cases at the school appear to be the result of "small social gatherings happening off campus" and urged students and others to avoid gatherings "regardless of size."

Most of the Temple students who have tested positive for the virus are asymptomatic, Englert said, while a few do have mild to moderate flu-like symptoms.

Villanova University has reported 24 positive cases. That institution, like Penn State, has created a public dashboard to log cases.

Of the 24 positive cases at Villanova, 12 students live on campus and 12 live off campus. No employees at Villanova have tested positive as of Monday. As of Monday, 9 percent of Villanova's on-campus isolation beds are in use.

West Chester University has reported 11 total cases. All 11 are students who live off-campus, according to information from the university.

At Gettysburg College, 13 new positive COVID-19 cases detected during student baseline testing prompted school officials to prohibit all informal and formal student gatherings over the weekend, the Gettysburgian student newspaper reported.

Additionally, the publication reported that guests at both on and off-campus houses are prohibited. "Anyone who violates these gathering restrictions will be subject to consequences laid out in the behavior rubric sent out at the beginning of the semester," the student newspaper reported.

The situation on college campuses in Pennsylvania mirrors what's happening nationwide: three of North Carolina's largest public universities halted in-person classes after hundreds of positive cases. At the University of Alabama, more than 1,000 have tested positive since classes resumed less than two weeks ago.

According to a report published Monday, there have now been 8,700 positive cases of coronavirus reported on college campuses nationwide.

More than 134,000 coronavirus cases have been reported in Pennsylvania since the onset of the pandemic and 7,673 in the state have died as a result of COVID-19, state data shows.

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