Northwest Iowa — “Scooping the loop,” “Cruising the loop,” or whatever you call it — it’s become a popular activity in this time of COVID-19. But health officials say you need to be careful.
Lyon County Public Health Administrator Melissa Stillson says that while strictly cruising the loop isn’t bad in-and-of-itself, there are some things we need to steer clear of.
(as said:)”In many communities, they are doing like “Cruise the Loop” or “Cruise Main Street,” you know, or show community support, different driving activities through like their Main Street areas over the course of like 30 minutes to an hour. One thing that we do want our county residents and citizens to understand is that being in a vehicle with your own family, you know is fine, but when we start doing gathering of people that are not from the same household or we have large amounts of young people who are congregating in the back of pickup trucks or larger vehicles like that, we are going backwards in the prevention of illness and the spread of illness. “
She says health officials now know that you can be spreading the disease before you have symptoms, so we need to avoid those kinds of situations. She says Governor Kim Reynolds’ order is still in effect until at least April 30th, and coronavirus is still very active in northwest Iowa. She reads from the Governor’s proclamation:
(as said:)”Social, community, spiritual, religious, recreational, leisure, and sporting gatherings and events of more than 10 people are hereby prohibited at all locations and venues including, but not limited to: parades, festivals, conventions, and fundraisers. Planned large gatherings and events must be canceled or postponed until after termination of this disaster.”
Not only should you not get people together from more than one household in a vehicle, she says there’s another concern as well.
(as said:)”We have in some communities seen the cruise the loop activities that has then led to people doing mass gatherings in grocery store parking lots, library parking lots, business parking lots, getting out of their vehicles, being close in the vicinity of one another, not practicing the six feet of social distancing, and you know working hard to prevent the illness and the spread of illness. Especially in Lyon County, we have worked very very hard with public health and health care partners and community partners over the last three weeks to keep our cases to a minimum, to prevent hospitalizations as best as we can, and ultimately, we don’t want to see any of our citizens with underlying health conditions getting contact with this virus and end up not having a good outcome.”
If you have any questions about what is and what is not recommended, you can call your local health department.
