County's region drops a point in state's COVID-19 risk system

BY CHUCK VANDENBERG
PCC EDITOR

JOHNSTON - State health officials have downgraded the county's region in COVID-19 risk assessment despite an uptick in the number of positive cases around the state.

Lee County sits in the Iowa Department of Public Health's Region 5. The regions were established to monitor and mobilize health care resources during the coronavirus outbreak.

IDPH Deputy Director Sarah Reisetter said several factors went toward downgrading last week's 9 to an 8 Monday morning.

"In Region 5, what's happened is that we continue to see the severity is decreasing," she said. "The rate of hospitalization has also gone down, so that metric went from a 3 to a 2, so that's why you saw the decrease from a 9 to an 8 in that region today."

After the weekend, Region 5 had 55 COVID patients hospitalized, with 12 new. Twenty-four of those patients were new patients and 24 were in ICUS in the region. Fifteen of those patients were on ventilators.

Reynolds said there were 727 inpatient beds still available in the region with 85 ICU beds and 166 ventilators still available.

State officials have pushed back their projection of Iowa's peak exposure to the virus to the end of the month, after weeks on indicating the peak could be in the middle of April.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said health officials are processing new information daily and providing that details as they are available.

She said long-term care centers continue to be a big concern for officials, citing 10% of all COVID-19 cases are traceable to those facilities and over half of the state's 43 deaths were long-term care residents. She said state officials are allocating the quicker Abbott Laboratory testing machines and supplies to some of those areas, as well as a state meat packing plant. She didn't divulge if it was the Tyson plant in Columbus Junction, or National Beef in Tama.

The Columbus Junction plant is located in Louisa County where there are currently 79 confirmed cases. Tama County has reported 101 positive cases.

Reynolds said the state will be releasing additional recovery data next week and will share additional information on the curve, which indicates data on the onset of the virus statewide. She said recovery numbers continue to look promising.

Reisetter said recovery status is based on people who've tested positive and then have gone seven days after the onset of symptoms, and then once they have been symptom free, including a fever, for three days, they are listed as recovered.

"Local public health agencies get an alert that lets them know of a positive case result. Then the local agency goes to work and follows up with the individual, close household contacts, and work environments," Reisetter said.

"Then we do have concerns about the health care professionals involved and any exposures identified in the health care work setting, so local agencies ask those questions. From there, they continue to follow up with patients, reaching out with questions about symptoms."

Reynolds said personal protective equipment continues to be an issue, despite statements from President Donald Trump on Friday that indicated there weren't many calls for PPE supplies.

"Stockpiles are not where they need to be," Reynolds said. "We are working together, but we need to dig deep within our states and raise the awareness for PPE," she said.

"We get hung up on the semantics. We made them aware of what we need and every time I've reached out, I've got a good response."

Reynolds is also following in the footsteps of Trump in convening an economic recovery panel to begin looking at when and how the state will start allowing more businesses to reopen.

When questioned what that would look like and where the officials would start, Reynolds said the committee will start looking into those questions.

"We're going to bring some department heads together this week to identify those what those questions look like, what the metrics will look like, and then we'll broaden the scope to include bringing the private sector on board to walk through the economic recovery," she said.

"We potentially will be able to open up in certain areas, but it's still too early. We're still not at the peak, and that's not anticipated until the end of the month. I want to open up the state as soon as we can, but I want to do it in a responsible manner. We don't want to open up the state and then close it back down again."

According to the IDPH website, Lee County now has 2 positive cases, Des Moines County has had 5 positive cases, and Henry County now has had 20 positive cases. Van Buren county has had 8 positive cases and Jefferson County has had 4 confirmed positive cases reported to the state.

Eighty-two of the state's 99 counties have had a least one positive test confirmed.