UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — With high vaccination rates among students, faculty and staff, and most of Pennsylvania and the nation currently rated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as having low COVID-19 Community Levels, Penn State is adjusting its COVID-19 mitigation requirements related to face masks and required testing. Beginning Wednesday, March 23, face masks will be optional in all indoor spaces, except in areas where the law requires them to be worn. Starting March 26, Penn State will pause its required COVID-19 testing for students, faculty and staff.
Penn State will continue its wastewater surveillance at University Park and officials will continue to closely monitor changing pandemic conditions nationally and in the areas surrounding Penn State campuses. The University will continue to monitor CDC guidance and adjust plans — including the reinstatement of indoor masking mandates and required COVID-19 testing — if necessary.
“With transmission levels low in much of the commonwealth and the high vaccination rates of our campus communities, we believe we can safely alter our masking and testing requirements at this time,” said Penn State President Eric Barron. “We will continue to provide voluntary testing to students, as well as contact tracing and quarantine and isolation space as needed; and any individual who wishes to continue wearing a mask indoors is encouraged to do so.”
Masking updates
Face masks will continue to be required in health care facilities, on public transportation, and in transportation hubs like airports and bus stations, as required by law. At this time, the College of Medicine will continue the mask mandate in alignment with Penn State Health to support patient care.
As of March 23, masking for all research locations will be optional, with the exception of some in-person human subjects research. Masking will be optional for in-person human subjects research that recruits healthy participants; for studies recruiting high-risk participants (as defined by the CDC), masking will continue to be required for both participants and study team members at all indoor locations.
Employees at Penn State who work in their own individual offices may request that visitors wear masks while in their private offices, and faculty and graduate teaching assistants may request that their students wear masks during classes. The University asks that community members cooperate respectfully with these requests.
Student testing
Although required COVID-19 testing is being paused, testing will continue to be available to students who believe they may have been exposed to COVID-19, are identified as a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19, or are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.
For asymptomatic students living on or near the University Park campus, drop-in voluntary rapid antigen testing will continue to be available for the next few weeks at the White Building. The University will announce the final date for testing access at the White Building as pandemic conditions allow. The White Building testing site’s hours of operation have changed and can be found on virusinfo.psu.edu.
At other Penn State campuses, student tests will continue to be distributed by the student health center or designated office. Students can check online to learn how to obtain and complete a test on their campus. Students are no longer able to order PCR tests online via Vault Health and are encouraged to use test kits they previously ordered.
Students who are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 should not go to classes or other activities and seek out symptomatic testing through a University or local health care provider. At University Park, students living on campus or in the local community who are exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 should continue to schedule testing appointments with University Health Services (UHS) via myUHS. Students living on or near other Penn State campuses should seek symptomatic testing via their campus’ health services or a local provider.
As a reminder, free, at-home rapid tests provided by the U.S. government are available to be ordered online at covidtests.gov.
With required testing paused and anticipated low usage of voluntary and asymptomatic testing, the University also will pause updating the data on its public COVID-19 dashboard beginning April 7. Historical data will remain available.
Faculty and staff testing
Faculty and staff may seek testing through their health care provider or other local COVID-19 testing options. Employees are no longer able to order PCR tests online from Vault Health and are encouraged to use test kits they previously ordered or obtain free, at-home rapid tests from the U.S. government by ordering them online at covidtests.gov. Symptomatic employees should stay home from work and are advised to schedule an appointment with their health care provider for testing.
Vaccinations
Vaccinations will continue to be required for employees in health care facilities as required by law. The University strongly encourages all students, faculty and staff to stay up to date with their vaccinations, including booster doses. Students at University Park, Commonwealth Campuses and Dickinson Law who have received their booster shot can upload their vaccination records through myUHS. Faculty and staff who have received their booster shot can upload an image of their COVID-19 vaccination card into Penn State’s Salesforce Health Cloud, a secure online platform for collecting and storing health data.