Penn State President Eric J. Barron has penned a "Digging Deeper" blog post looking back at the University's response to COVID-19 and thanks those who helped Penn State adapt and adjust to the pandemic.
"It has been two long and challenging years under the cloud of a global pandemic," Barron wrote. "Given the new variants and uncertainty that still remains among medical experts, we can expect to be managing COVID-19 well into the future. However, it appears that we have turned a significant corner. The vaccines are widely available and have had their intended effect: Hospitalizations are down, masks are largely optional and physical distancing is no longer a part of our social gatherings.
I realize that at this time in the semester, everyone is going at 100 miles per hour. But I want to take a moment to pause and thank you for helping us to adjust and adapt to COVID-19. Moving Penn State’s vast, complex organization to primarily remote operations was an enormous undertaking with no precedent or pre-existing plan to follow. The fact that we were largely successful is a credit to the entire Penn State community and our many partners throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It was inspiring and deeply gratifying to see how everyone came together to adapt and adjust to new technology, new procedures for health and safety, economic hardships resulting from the pandemic, mental and physical health issues related to COVID-19, and countless other changes to our personal and work lives. ‘Incredible’ doesn’t begin to describe the effort that spanned our teaching, research and service operations."