Des Moines, Iowa — Governor Kim Reynolds says the community spread of COVID through northwest Iowa’s Sioux County appears to be leveling off.
Over the past two weeks, over 30 percent of Sioux County residents who’ve been screened for COVID tested positive for the virus.
(as said) “Every night I’m able to see if they’re increasing, decreasing or stabilized and so it is really high,” Reynolds says, “but I think the outlook has it in a stabilization mode, so hopefully we’ll start to see some of those positive cases come down.”
Reynolds says public health officials haven’t connected Sioux County’s high number of COVID cases with an outbreak. Ten other Iowa counties have 14-day COVID testing positivity rates above 15 percent.
(as said) “We need to do the case investigation, we need to see what’s that tied to and take appropriate steps and I believe they’re doing that,” Reynolds says, “and hopefully we can continue to move forward and see the case counts drop.”
Three of the top five counties for number of tests coming back positive are in our area. Sioux is at the top with 30.2 percent. Osceola is second with 26.4 percent. Lyon is fourth with 22.1 percent. O’Brien is down the list at 15th with only 14.4 percent of ordered tests coming back positive for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the number of outbreaks in nursing homes has increased this month. The state’s coronavirus website now lists outbreaks at 41 nursing homes and 947 residents have the virus.
