Penn State reports no COVID-19 in 102 tested

Penn State director of athletics Sandy Barbour said Wednesday that 102 athletes participating in voluntary workouts on campus have been tested for COVID-19 and that none has tested positive.

Speaking with the media for the first time in more than three months, Barbour said that Penn State has and will test athletes upon their campus arrival and if they’re showing any symptoms of COVID-19, at least until the fall semester begins in late August.

“We have, as a university and as an athletic department, made a decision that we will report those results every two weeks,” she said during an hour-long video conference. “We’ll do it on Wednesdays. We will make those public every two weeks up until when the university returns all of our students. Then we’ll make a decision how those results might be folded (into Centre County testing numbers).”

Some but not all members of Penn State’s football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s soccer, women’s soccer and women’s volleyball teams have returned to campus for voluntary workouts.

The 102 athletes do not include men’s and women’s soccer and women’s volleyball athletes who returned to campus earlier this week. Barbour said some athletes from the six teams have not yet returned to campus.

“It’s not huge,” she said. “Some of those actually were not COVID related. They were, ‘I’m not ready to come back right now.’ We are highly discouraging that they leave, because when they return they will have to be retested and requarantined.”

If a Penn State athlete decides not to return to campus for the fall semester, Barbour said their scholarship will be honored.

“We’ve been really clear about that,” she said. “This is all about their health and safety, and an element of their health and safety is their comfort. We have at every turn indicated that it is their decision. Their scholarship is not in jeopardy at all.”

Barbour said that Penn State will not announce test results of staff and employees, but they will be included in the Centre County numbers. If a player, coach or staff member does test positive for coronavirus, they will be isolated or quarantined for at least 14 days.

“Depending on whether it’s a student and where they live, that could be at home,” Barbour said.

Penn State president Eric Barron said last week that the university will use the 223-room Nittany Lion Inn, which has been closed since March, to quarantine students who test positive. Inperson classes are scheduled to resume in the fall.

Barbour said Penn State will not ask athletes to sign a COVID-19 waiver, even though schools like Ohio State have.

“We do have what we are calling our One Team Pledge that all of our student-athletes and coaches eventually will sign,” Barbour said. “All that is a reiteration