As state rolls back COVID response, local health agencies say it's not time to relax
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - (Iowa's News Now) — As Tuesday midnight rolls into Wednesday morning, Iowa's two coronavirus tracking websites will go dark.
Earlier this month, Governor Kim Reynolds announced the state's public health emergency proclamation, which has been around since March 2020, will expire. Though many elements of the original proclamation dropped off over the last nearly two years, this will be the first time the state has been without it.
For most Iowans, the biggest difference come Wednesday will be the end of coronavirus.iowa.gov and vaccinate.iowa.gov. Instead, the Iowa Department of Public Health will send a weekly COVID report, much like it does the flu, starting Wednesday.
IDPH says its website will include positive case data, including:
- Positive tests since March of 2020 (age/sex/race)
- Deaths since March of 2020
- Case by county
- Positive tests in past 7 days
- Epi Curve since March of 2020
- Variant breakdown by week
The agency will also publish vaccine data, such as total series completed, completed boosters, a county map, and the rate of fully vaccinated Iowans.
The website will also include links to data gathered by federal partners that IDPH will no longer collect, including hospitalizations.
The site will not include resources to help Iowans find a vaccination location beyond a link to the CDC, nor will IDPH publish outbreaks at long-term care facilities. The agency is no longer requiring LTCs or hospitals to report case numbers; that information will still be collected by federal agencies. IDPH says it will continue to monitor and respond to LTC outbreaks using data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Pramod Dwivedi, director of Linn County Public Health, says these changes won't have a significant impact on their reporting, but it will eliminate some of the data they use in making local reports.
"We are not going to receive the negative test results, which means we cannot produce the community positivity rate, right? Because that's our denominator, positivity rate, positivity number divided by negative test results numbers, so that's how we get the positivity," he says.
Dwivedi says LCPH will continue to work with its local and federal partners, including area hospitals, on reporting COVID numbers.
Governor Reynolds cited discontinued public health proclamations in nearly half of U.S. States, with more set to expire in February, in an announcement February 3rd. Dwivedi says while the state may be dialing back its response, it's not time for Iowans to treat the pandemic like it's over.
"Although the proclamation, the public health emergency proclamation has been discontinued, it doesn't mean that we are out of pandemic," he says. "We are still in the pandemic mode and as a local health agency, we are doing everything we can to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our neighbors."
A similar sentiment was shared by Sam Jarvis of Johnson County Public Health the day Governor Reynolds announced the proclamations end.
"I think the most important part to focus on and continue to iterate is the importance of CDC guidelines for testing, quarantine and isolation, so we'll continue to focus on and emphasize the education and promotion of those measures," Jarvis said February 3rd. "Certainly, just because the proclamation is ending or expiring later this month, doesn't mean we need to stop doing those things and we'll continue to promote healthy behaviors."
Dwivedi says we "might" get to an endemic stage with COVID-19; he says that means a disease or virus is regularly found in a region and people have many ways of dealing with it, like malaria. But until then, he says, he'll advise his "neighbors" to not lose patience or vigilance against the coronavirus.