Facilities Response to COVID-19 Cases

Specialized Cleaning of HHD Spaces Occupied by Individuals Confirmed as COVID-19 Cases

The determination of whether an HHD space requires specialized cleaning because of recent occupancy by a confirmed COVID-19 case will be made by HHD’s designated pandemic safety officer (PSO), Kevin Kelliher. Supervisors should contact the PSO at 814-865-1426 or kxk84@psu.edu when they learn that an HHD space has been occupied by an employee or student with COVID-19.

The PSO will respond and follow, with consultation from Environmental Health and Safety if needed, the procedures as described on the last page of the University’s COVID-19 Space Closure Assessment and Reporting Tool. Only if the report from the supervisor comes in to the PSO within 48 hours of the individual experiencing symptoms or testing positive last occupying the space will the space be considered further for potential temporary closure.

Spaces may be temporarily closed as a preventative measure, but also may be temporarily closed for actual disinfection. If a space is to be closed, the PSO will notify the supervisor and will copy the unit head (as well as other HHD unit heads who also occupy the building housing the closed space).

Please remember that, in addition to triggering space being assessed for possible closure, an individual occupying HHD space who reports symptoms or a positive test will also be instructed separately to report for contact tracing. These two processes—space evaluation and contact tracing—will occur in parallel.

Observation of a temporarily closed space should not change the occupancy of a building beyond the affected room(s).

Instructional Spaces Occupied by Individuals Confirmed as COVID-19 Cases

With respect to instructional spaces in HHD buildings (and elsewhere on campus), the Office of Physical Plant has developed enhanced cleaning procedures as described above. Instructors receiving notification from Student Support Services that a student in a class has been placed in quarantine or isolation, the space in which the class takes place will have already been cleaned and disinfected within the past 24 hours since the student was last in the class.

Even if a student contacts an instructor and reports that they are ill and have attended class on that same day, as long as masking and physical distancing were practiced in class, the classroom will be cleaned at day’s end as part of the daily enhanced cleaning procedures.

If the class is one in which students and faculty participate in higher-risk indoor instructional activities with potential for increased respiratory transmission (e.g., high intensity physical activity or high intensity breathing activity), instructors should contact HHD’s PSO (Kevin Kelliher at 814-865-1426/kxk84@psu.edu) to initiate an evaluation for potential temporary closure of the instructional space following the same guidelines as above.

In addition, if any student is physically sick (e.g., vomits) in a classroom, instructors should dismiss the class, direct the student to University Health Services, contact OPP to initiate clean-up and contact the PSO.