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PHOTO AP In this August 12 photo, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds attends the opening day of the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Public health officials in the largest county of Iowa are sounding the alarm that too few people wear masks and get vaccinated as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations rise.
DES MOINES – Public health officials in the largest county in Iowa sound the alarm that too few people wear masks and get vaccinated as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations soar in state to levels never seen since January.
The rise in the delta variant of COVID-19 comes as children return to schools that are prohibited from covering their faces due to a law approved earlier this year by the Republican-controlled legislature and promulgated by GOP Governor Kim Reynolds.
In its weekly update Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Public Health noted 42 deaths from the coronavirus since last week’s report, bringing the state’s total to 6,268 deaths.
The state has reported 7,619 positive tests in the past seven days. In six of the past 10 days, Iowa has posted more than 1,000 positive tests per day.
The report shows that more young people are infected. In the past seven days, 17% of the state’s positive tests were among under-17s, up from 13%.
Officials are particularly concerned in Polk County, which just welcomed more than one million visitors to the Iowa State Fair, where masks were voluntary and large crowds gathered for concerts and indoor events. The county has 82,000 children under the age of 12 who do not qualify for vaccination and are vulnerable to infection, said Polk County Health Department Director Helen Eddy.
“Our hospitals are full. Our caregivers are tired. Parents and guardians are afraid to send their children to school ”, Eddy said in a statement Tuesday as she begged people to get vaccinated and wear masks again in public.
Public health officials said it would be difficult to trace cases until the 11-day fair in Des Moines. It will likely take at least five days for symptoms to appear and seven to 10 days for cases to be detected in the data, said Dr Meghan Schaeffer, an epidemiologist working as a consultant for Polk County.
In Polk County, 54.7% of the population is fully vaccinated and coronavirus cases have increased 175% in the past three weeks. Hospitals in the region have 109 COVID-19 patients.
“We haven’t seen a trend in COVID-19-related hospitalizations like this since the last wave of COVID-19, which took place in October 2020,” Polk County Health Department said in Tuesday’s statement. Four of those hospitalized are under 18, the highest number of patients the county has seen.
County health officials said they expected the rise in the number of new cases to continue because school has started and people “do not follow COVID-19 prevention strategies, including wearing masks in indoor public places.”
According to data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 91 of 99 counties in Iowa have a high rate of spread. The other eight belong to the category of significant deviations.
In western Iowa, the AHSTW school district postponed the first day of classes from Tuesday to August 30 after several staff members tested positive for COVID-19 and many more were exposed. This is the first example of the aggressively spread delta variant that is making it harder to go back to school this year in Iowa.
Staff in the administration building at Des Moines Public Schools were working remotely due to an outbreak just days before school started. The building was to remain closed until Friday. School began Wednesday in the state’s largest district with 33,000 students and nearly 5,000 employees.
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