Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said today she will extend the state's mask requirements and limitations on some indoor and outdoor gatherings for another week. Last month, Reynolds issued a mask requirement for when people are indoors and within 6 feet of people from outside of their household for 15 minutes or more, limited the size of indoor and outdoor gatherings; and restricted bar hours.
Also at yesterday’s news conference, Reynolds said she wants to keep students in class during the COVID-19 pandemic. She says scientific evidence shows children could lose up to nine months of learning if they are not in class.
Public health records say Iowa has added another 123 coronavirus related deaths boosting the state’s death toll to 3,021. The count continued to grow as hospitalization rates, although significantly lower than a week ago, remain high. The Iowa Department of Public Health is transitioning to a new method of counting deaths. It has the potential add several hundred more cases to the state's total. In Woodbury County there have been 65 additional cases reported in the past 24 hours, according to Siouxland District Health.
The amount of water being released into the Missouri River from a key dam on the Nebraska-South Dakota border has been reduced to winter levels. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say that the amount of water was down significantly from the reduction seen a year earlier, after heavy rain and snow melt sent the river to record levels and flooded parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
