UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State has released a redesigned version of its COVID-19 dashboard for the spring 2021 semester that provides additional information to help students, faculty, staff and community members better understand COVID-19 testing results, virus prevalence, and quarantine and isolation capacity on each of the University’s campuses.
The revamped dashboard, which can be found on Penn State’s official coronavirus information website, currently shows the results of on-campus COVID-19 testing conducted from Dec. 19 through Jan. 17 for faculty, staff and students, including student-athletes. Testing data is added to the dashboard once results are received, and displayed by the date the test was performed.
After updating on Tuesdays and Fridays during the fall, the dashboard will be updated three times per week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, throughout the spring semester.
New dashboard features include:
- A University-wide overview of testing results, available by clicking the “All Campuses” button at the top of the campus list.
- Testing data displayed by day and as a seven-day snapshot for students and employees.
- Calculations for the virus positivity rate, charted over time and broken down by day, the last seven days, and in total.
- Enhanced quarantine and isolation data, including details on current quarantine and isolation utilization as a percentage of overall capacity.
The dashboard also includes current results from the University’s spring 2021 pre-semester testing program. Students from all campuses are required to participate in this testing and have a negative COVID-19 test result from a University-provided test on file prior to returning to their campus community. This includes any students who remained on campus or in their campus communities over the winter break. Self-test kits are available at no cost. The University intends to have a test result on file for every student within 72 hours of their intended return.
As it was in the fall semester, surveillance testing information will be added to the dashboard once that testing resumes later in the spring semester following the remote learning period. The University will conduct daily random surveillance testing of 2% of the on-campus student and employee population.
Information about current University testing options is available at https://virusinfo.psu.edu/testing-support/.