Des Moines, Iowa — Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a deal to buy Covid-19 test kits that can be used by Iowans at home, but a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Health says details of how to get those kits will be released in the coming weeks.
The governor told reporters she signed the contract to buy the test kits on Tuesday.
Reynolds did not disclose the purchase price. The first drive through Test Iowa sites were established in late April of last year as COVID cases began to spike here. By THIS spring, just five state-run testing sites remained. The Council Bluffs site closed Wednesday. The site in Cedar Rapids closed at the end of testing late Thursday afternoon and the Waterloo Test Iowa location was set to close Friday. On Friday, July 16th, the final two locations in Davenport and Des Moines will close for good. The governor says the State Hygienic Lab will be involved in distributing the at-home test kits for COVID-19.
110 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed by tests reported to the state Wednesday and about 47 percent of eligible Iowans are fully vaccinated. In some rural counties, fewer than one in three residents are vaccinated and some medical professionals fear more contagious variants of the virus may already be circulating. Reynolds says a majority of Iowa adults statewide have had at least one dose of vaccine and she does not plan to offer the kind of incentives or prizes governors in some other states are offering to fully vaccinated residents.
Iowa’s vaccination rate ranks 22nd among the states, with more than 1.4 million Iowans fully vaccinated according to the state’s website.
