Des Moines, Iowa — The latest data from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows 61 percent of the patients in Iowa hospitals were admitted for treatment of COVID.
All Iowa hospital patients are screened for COVID and about a thousand patients have tested positive for the virus. Governor Kim Reynolds says a New York Times map shows the entire state of Iowa — like the rest of the country — is a COVID hot spot.
Reynolds stayed home because she was sick last Thursday and Friday and had no public events Monday either. The governor says it appears she’s recovering from a bad cold that she probably picked up from the nursing home where her mother is being cared for.
Reynolds took a COVID test last Thursday that came back negative as well.
Reynolds says a lot of her symptoms have been similiar to COVID, so that’s why she’s taking the tests.
A spokesman for Reynolds says no one else in the governor’s office has caught whatever bug Reynolds got. Reynolds says as a public figure, it’s hard to cancel events like she did last Thursday and Friday.
Reynolds spoke with reporters after attending an hour-long event in the statehouse rotunda Wednesday morning.
