White House calls for action in ‘red zone’ Iowa as Reynolds relaxes COVID-19 guidelines

As Iowa moves to relax its quarantine guidelines in defiance of CDC guidelines, the White House Coronavirus Task Force is warning that the state remains in the “red zone” for new cases of COVID-19.

Red-zone states have had at least 101 new cases per 100,000 population. Iowa had 197 new cases per 100,000 population last week, compared to a national average of 93 per 100,000.

The new report shows that Iowa’s rate of new infections represents an increase of 13% in only one week.

The report notes that as of last week, Iowa had the sixth highest rate of new infections in the country. Iowa is also in the orange zone for test positivity, indicating a rate between 8% and 10%, the task force said. That’s the nation’s 10th highest rate for test positivity.

Those findings coincide with a decision by Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Department of Public Health to loosen quarantine guidelines. The state is no longer recommending that Iowans quarantine for two weeks if they’re exposed to someone with COVID-19, if they and others they come into contact with wear face masks.

At the same time, Reynolds said while face masks are effective at slowing the spread of the virus, she will not require them in schools.

The governor’s actions, which run counter to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is intended to allow more teachers and students to remain in school even if they have been exposed to the virus.

According to the task force, the three Iowa counties with the highest number of new cases last week were Polk County, followed by Woodbury County, followed by Dubuque County. Together, those three counties represent 24.5% of new cases in Iowa.

The outlook isn’t much better elsewhere in Iowa, with 70% of all counties having either moderate or high levels of community transmission, with 29% having high levels of community transmission that placed them in the red zone.

The task force points out that test positivity and case rates have been sustained at the highest levels in Iowa during the past four weeks, “putting Iowa in a vulnerable position going into the fall and winter.”

The task force has again called on Iowa to “institute mask requirements statewide, with reduced capacity for indoor dining and bars, while expanding outdoor dining options.” Reynolds has resisted calls for a statewide mask mandate, saying she trusts Iowans to act responsibly.

The task force also urges Iowa to use a different set of metrics, such as those in West Virginia, to determine how to manage school learning and extracurricular school-activity options.

Among the other recommendations for Iowa:

• The state should rapidly scale up testing to identify individuals with COVID-19, and offer support for isolation to reduce community transmission. Testing should target areas of the state with persistent high levels of transmission and rapidly increasing infections.
• The Iowa Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 online dashboard should provide county trends in test positivity and case rates with numerators and denominators so the community can better follow local transmission status.
• Decrease the introduction of COVID-19 in nursing homes through on-site inspections aimed at infection-control practices.