2nd Penn State student dies of covid-19 complications

Students and staff at Penn State are mourning the coronavirus-related death of a second student from the university.

Neil Patel, 20, a sixth semester Penn State Honors College scholar from Upper Merion Township, died Sunday at a Philadelphia hospital, where he was taken in mid-April with severe effects of covid-19.

A university spokeswoman said Penn State has been in touch with Patel’s family and is offering counseling and support to those who have been affected by his death.

“The university community shares our deepest condolences with Neil Patel’s friends and family during this difficult time,” an official statement posted Monday read.

On Tuesday, university officials are expected to discuss safety protocols for the fall semester at a community town hall.

As of Monday, Penn State was asking students to forward their vaccine status to the university. Vaccination clinics are planned to be held on campus, but the sprawling university that enrolls about 90,000 students at University Park and at satellite campuses across Pennsylvania has not issued a vaccine mandate.

The Penn State community marked the first student to die of complications of the virus, 21-year-old Juan Garcia of Allentown, on June 30, 2020. Officials said Garcia had been living in off-campus housing at University Park when he became ill June 19, 2020, and returned home.

Hema and Chet Patel detailed their son’s tragic illness in updates on a GoFundMe page that as of Monday had raised more than $87,000 toward his expenses.

As news of his death spread, condolences were being posted online, including one from an Upper Merion School District advocate who tweeted: “May his light and love be with us,” and asked for prayers for the Patel family.

Our hearts are heavy with the passing of our former student Neil Patel. May his light and love be with us as a community. Please keep the Patel family in your thoughts and prayers. ??❤️ @UpperMerionSD

— Maura Buri- Public Ed Advocate (@mauraburi) August 2, 2021

Patel had been living at home and attending classes remotely last spring when he fell ill. A business major who carried minors in international finance and French, he was working two jobs to help finance a much-anticipated trip to France this summer.

The Patels told how their son, who suffered severe heart and lung damage in the early stages of the disease, needed more help than a ventilator could provide and was placed on a heart and lung machine, suffered repeated infections and bleeding and had to have an arm amputated as the impact of the virus raged in his young body.

Chet Patel said his son had been rejected the first time he tried to be vaccinated, at the clinic in Philadelphia that limited vaccine supplies to city residents. He said the young man came down with symptoms of the virus the day before his first scheduled vaccination.

“It was too late,” Chet Patel wrote in a blog post.

“This young man, my son, was not one of the careless ones. I’m sure he was careless in moments, but not by philosophy,” Patel’s father posted. “He was exposed to covid at one of those frontline jobs by people less careful than himself.”

Patel and Garcia are among a handful of U.S. college students and employees known to have died because of complications of covid-19. Although current figures for such deaths were not readily available, a New York Times survey released in mid-December counted 90 deaths from covid-19 among U.S. college students and staff, out of 397,000 confirmed infections.