Coronavirus brief: The biggest COVID-19 stories from the last 24 hours in Sioux City, beyond
Get the latest on top stories in and around Sioux City, and check updated COVID-19 counts for Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota.
Good Tuesday morning.
Here are the biggest stories affecting Sioux City and the tri-state area today: Officials have administered nearly 3,500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine in Woodbury County, Sioux City school district teachers may receive the first dose by the end of January and anti-mask protestors marked the opening day of the Iowa legislative session.
By early Tuesday morning, Iowa had reported at least 298,040 (35,158 active) cases of COVID-19, Nebraska 176,670 (52,334 active) and South Dakota 103,499 (5,102 active).
Click through for our full coronavirus coverage.
SIOUX CITY -- As of Monday morning, Siouxland District Health Department Director Kevin Grieme said Woodbury County has received 4,400 total doses of COVID-19 vaccine, 3,450 of which have been administered.
Grieme said the data doesn't include vaccines being given to staff and residents in long-term care facilities through national pharmacy chains.
"Siouxland District Health Department is the allocating entity for Woodbury County, so all doses are going to flow through us except for those that go directly to the long-term care through the pharmacy. We have no control over them," Grieme said during Monday's Sioux City Council meeting. "That is a prioritized audience. They are receiving the vaccine as fast as anybody wants that."
Grieme said health care professionals are still the focus of the county's vaccination efforts and that no doses are being held back at the local level to supply second doses.
"That's all built into the distribution process," he said. "Our goal is always to receive the initial dose and turning around and getting this out there."
Grieme said vaccination clinics are planned Thursday and Friday to vaccinate more health care professionals, including rural EMS squads.
"Hopefully, we'll be able to (have) at least another 800 to 900 doses actually out in the community, delivered, injected into arms by then," he said.
Grieme said District Health expects to have a limited supply of the vaccine for a few weeks, as the state seeks to meet its vaccination commitment to long-term care facilities.
"As few as 19,000 doses for the entire state, but they will allocate that across the way," he said.
Grieme noted that he has "not seen vaccine flowing into South Dakota" and that Southeast South Dakota residents are calling his department seeking inoculations.
"This is really a federal asset, so we don't necessarily deny. But, in this case, once we get past the health care professionals, we're trying to figure out what our strategy is, because our priority is to get Iowa residents of Woodbury County," he said.
After health care providers, Grieme said District Health is debating between prioritizing those 70 and older or 75 and older. Since the vaccine must be fully administered within five days of thawing, he said the department wants to ensure enough people are in the queue.
"More importantly, once you take the first dose out of the vial, you have six hours to get the whole vial used. The Pfizer has five doses per vial and the Moderna has 10 doses per vial," he said. "We don't want to have any go to waste."
Grieme told the council that pre-scheduled vaccination clinics probably won't happen until April, or even closer to June or July, for members of the public who don't fall into one of the priority groups due their profession, age, or a pre-existing condition, which would increase their risk for severe illness if they contract the virus.
SIOUX CITY -- Nearly 90 percent of Sioux City School District employees plan to take the vaccine for the novel coronavirus, and that vaccine could be available as soon as the last week of January, Superintendent Paul Gausman said Monday.
Speaking in the Sioux City School Board meeting, Gausman said he's had discussions with the Siouxland District Health Department, who will ultimately set vaccine plan details.
Gausman said the next batch of vaccines in the county will likely be available to district employees by the last week in January or the first week in February, based on what he's heard from Siouxland District Health officials. As of Monday, Gausman said a survey of the district's 2,500 teachers, administrators, bus drivers, food service workers and other support personnel showed 88 percent said they'd take the vaccine.
He said the vaccine doses will likely be administered at the three high schools. In response to a question from board member Dan Greenwell, Gausman confirmed the district is not planning to vaccinate the 14,800 pupils.
Sioux City Education Association President Kris Snavely, who heads the teacher union group, said the long first semester of giving instruction amid the coronavirus pandemic has been wearing on teachers.
"Staff burnout is high. We need to make sure our teachers are safe," Snavely said.
Board president Perla Alarcon-Flory gave an "ovation" to teachers, saying they and all school personnel take seriously the task of keeping students safe while giving course instruction.
Alarcon-Flory added that community members in January have "flooded" school board and administrators with opinions on the best method of instruction. The board decided not to alter a decision made at the last meeting of Dec. 14, when voting that after the holiday break, courses beginning Jan. 4 would resume in a hybrid version of learning for the first two weeks of January. That plan was set to lessen any impact of pupils and staff from mingling with friends and family over the break.
The setup -- which ends Friday, two days before first semester ends -- is that half of district students attend school on Monday and Thursday, while the other half have in-person classes on Tuesdays and Fridays. The other three days, classes are consumed online.
Alarcon-Flory and other board members said there was no need to lengthen the hybrid model beyond this week, since virus numbers had considerably tapered down.
The first week following the resumption of classes after the holiday break showed only one pupil and no teachers tested positive for the novel coronavirus over the first five days of 2021. That outcome made for the clearest week since Sioux City School District reporting on the virus began in early September.
The Monday meeting marked the first time in several months that board member Monique Scarlett did not push for hybrid learning to be adopted. Based on first semester test scores, Greenwell said, "the in-person has been effective."
The pandemic impact trend in the district lessened in December. Statistics from Dec. 18, the last report prior to the break, showed four students and six employees tested positive, while the numbers the prior week had 12 students testing positive.
From early October to December, more than two dozen class sections have converted from in-person to virtual learning for two weeks, as higher virus numbers showed up in varying schools.
As of Monday, the number of positive cases in the county was above 12,700. There have been 173 deaths from COVID-19 in Woodbury County.
Budget talks
In other business, the board members again discussed steps toward setting the 2021-22 year budget. Chief Financial Officer Patty Blankenship said general fund targeted spending will likely be in the vicinity of $178 million, for a total budget that will be above $200 million.
Gausman said Gov. Kim Reynolds on Tuesday could announce a target for the amount of supplemental state aid that could come out of the Legislature. The potential amount of new supplemental state aid placed into the proposed district budget for 2021-22 was 1 percent and 2 percent, with scenarios of expenses rising at 2 percent or 3 percent.
There will be no budget discussions in the next board meeting on Jan. 25, but it will be a topic in the following four meetings in February and March, including March 22, when a final review is done, prior to passing the budget on April 12.
DES MOINES — State lawmakers returned to the Iowa Capitol on Monday, with the state still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, to perform their work for this year’s legislative session.
They were joined inside the Capitol by hundreds of anti-mask protesters.
Hundreds of people — few, if any of them wearing face coverings — packed into the Iowa Capitol rotunda on Monday and stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they protested mask-wearing and other public health measures designed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the protesters then went to the Senate and House chamber galleries to observe the short opening day’s proceedings.
Iowa’s current public health order requires people to wear masks in public when inside and around others for more than 15 minutes. But those orders do not apply to the Iowa Capitol, where state lawmakers are able to create their own rules of operation.
Republicans, who with their majorities in the Iowa House and Senate determine rules for the chambers, decided against requiring face masks for visitors to the Capitol.
More than 4,000 Iowans and more than 374,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, according to state and federal data. The global pandemic has claimed nearly 2 million lives.
Iowa’s COVID-19 numbers have been falling steadily since a dramatic spike in cases, hospitalizations and deaths during November and December. However, those numbers recently have started to increase again.
Infectious disease and public health experts are in near-unanimous agreement that maintaining at least 6 feet of physical distance from others and wearing face coverings are among the best ways to slow the virus’ spread.
“Of course it’s concerning anytime you’ve got large groups of people who aren’t wearing masks. And indoors you know there’s an elevated likelihood of coronavirus transmission. So that’s a concern,” said Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, D-Coralville. “This could all come to an end if the majority (Republicans) would decide that the statehouse should follow the same rules as everyday Iowans under the governor’s public health emergency declaration.”
The bureau sought comment or reaction from Republican Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, Republican House Speaker Pat Grassley, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, and the state public health department. As of early Monday afternoon, none had responded.
The first day of the session was typically ceremonial, with legislative leaders giving opening-day remarks.
Wahls began his remarks by asking all legislators to stand for a moment of silence and prayer for the Iowans and Americans who have died due to COVID-19. And he shared a story of a constituent, a Coralville U.S. Postal Service worker, who died from COVID-19.
“We all have stories just like this one in the communities we represent. We will all carry the scars of this pandemic with us for the rest of our lives and as we get back to work for the people of this great state,” Wahls said.
Whitver also mentioned the pandemic. He said Republicans’ conservative budgeting practices prepared the state to weather any financial storm due to the pandemic, and talked about the strain the pandemic has had on businesses and people who live in or have a loved one who lives in a nursing home.
“This year we are focused on putting our state back on a path of success and prosperity after all these challenges. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: the best recovery plan is a job. This recovery plan means sticking to those same principles guiding us for the last several years.”
SIOUX CITY -- No COVID-19-related deaths were reported by any Siouxland counties on Monday.
Siouxland District Health Department reported 27 new cases of the virus in Woodbury County, where the 14-day COVID-19 positivity rate stood at 16.4 percent. Woodbury County had 12,759 total cases of the virus and 173 total deaths as of Monday evening, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health.
Across the Missouri River in Nebraska, Dakota County added 19 new cases of the virus. The Northeast Nebraska county had 3,684 total COVID-19 cases of 67 total COVID-19-related deaths as of Monday. Its seven-day rolling average COVID-19 positivity rate was 11.19 percent Monday.
Crawford County continued to have the highest 14-day COVID-19 positivity rate in Northwest Iowa and the fourth highest in the state at 25.3 percent. The county had recorded 2,251 total cases of the virus and 22 total deaths as of Monday evening.
District Health reported that 46 patients with the novel coronavirus were hospitalized at either MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center or UnityPoint Health -- St. Luke's, which was unchanged from Sunday.
Of those patients, 36 were hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19. Another 10 people in the hospital have the virus, but are hospitalized for other reasons. Of the total, 20 are Woodbury County residents.
IDPH data, which was last updated Monday, shows that a total of 490 hospital beds are available in Regional Medical Coordination Center Region 3, which includes Woodbury County and most of Northwest Iowa.
RMCC 3 has a total of 87 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, down four from Sunday. Eighteen of those patients are in ICU beds and there are still 79 ICU beds available. The state statistics show five ventilators being used by patients and an additional 98 ventilators are available in the region.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa lawmakers began their legislative session on Monday with no mask requirements, and many members opted not to wear face coverings even as rates of coronavirus infections rise in the Des Moines area and much of the state.
Republicans, who hold majorities in both the House and Senate, chose not to mandate masks or even require that members disclose if they have been infected by the virus. During opening ceremonies, most Republicans didn't wear masks while all Democrats were protected by a mask or face shield.
“There’s nothing we can do stop a member from coming on the floor of the House to take a vote even if did they have a positive case or they chose they were not going to wear a mask,” said House Speaker Pat Grassley.
Grassley and Senate Majority leader Jack Whitver said they've taken measures to allow for social distancing and have suggested to their members that masks be worn when they can't remain apart.
Whitver said subcommittee meetings, which often resulted in small meeting rooms packed with lobbyists, citizens, reporters and lawmakers, will be held on Zoom, and full committees will meet in the Senate chamber.
“So, the thought that someone’s going to test positive and then just continue to come to the Capitol and try to spread it to people, I don’t think that’s an accurate perception of what would likely happen at the Capitol,” Whitver said.
Grassley said all meetings will be at the Capitol but only in rooms with space for more distant seating and with all meetings streamed on the internet.
Democrats criticized the protocols and said they would require members to wear masks. Most will not be in the Capitol for routine work, opting to be at a remote location in state buildings around the Capitol where distancing is possible, Democratic leaders said.
“I’m concerned and want to avoid turning the Legislature into super spreader event,” said House Democratic Leader Todd Prichard.
While most Republicans didn't wear masks in the chambers, more than 200 people gathered in the Capitol rotunda without masks to voice their opposition to rules intended to slow the spread of the virus, which has killed over 4,000 people in Iowa.
The protesters arrived more than an hour before the session began and delivered speeches in a space between the House and Senate chambers.
They chanted “freedom” and many held signs that said “coercion is not consent,” “Iowa businesses are not public health police” and “mandates belong in socialist countries.”
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has resisted requiring masks since the outbreak began in the spring but now requires them in many public indoor spaces where people cannot socially distance. Those rules don't apply to the Legislature, which Reynolds notes is a separate branch of government and one she argues should set its own guidelines.
Reynolds, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, has said it's best to avoid mandates and leave it to individual citizens to take necessary precautions. She has taken pride in her efforts to keep most businesses open and said her approach has been a difficult balance between protecting lives and livelihoods.
During the pandemic 4,139 Iowans have died, and deaths and virus activity are again increasing.
The seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate in Iowa jumped over the past two weeks from 34% on Dec. 27 to nearly 43% on Jan. 10, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths in Iowa was up from 22 deaths per day on Dec. 27 to 27 deaths per day on Jan. 10.
The state posted an additional death on Monday. The total confirmed positive case count rose to 296,866.
State public health data shows Polk County, home to the state Capitol, has a 15.19% coronavirus positivity rate. It is one of 58 counties over 15%, a level that signifies significant community spread of the virus.
Security was heightened at the building with Iowa State Patrol officers stationed outside public entrances and throughout the building. A spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, It was unclear if it was due to expectations of possible violent outbreaks similar to those at the U.S. Capitol last week or because of the large protest at the building.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska appears to have avoided a post-Christmas spike in coronavirus cases that many had feared, although it's not entirely clear why, Gov. Pete Ricketts said Monday.
It may be because people followed virus safety guidelines warning against attending holiday gatherings, Ricketts said during a news conference.
“I think a lot of Nebraskans made modifications to their holiday get togethers," he said. “I’d also say, there’s also a lot of we don't know about this virus."
The Republican governor said the decision not to impose a statewide lockdown may also have played a role because it helped avoid pandemic fatigue that leads some people to break the recommendations. Other states, such as California, have reported large increases in cases in December.
“We tried to strike a balance in Nebraska,” Ricketts said.
Nebraska has imposed restrictions on crowd sizes and public spaces, but has never imposed a stay-at-home order or a statewide mask mandate.
The state saw a sharp increase in virus hospitalizations in mid-November, raising concerns about bed space and burnout among hospital workers. The numbers have since declined, although public health officials say it's important for residents to continue following social distancing safety guidelines.
The state said 475 people were being treated for COVID-19 in Nebraska hospitals on Sunday, up slightly from the previous day but down from 517 at the start of January. The number of hospitalizations is less than half of the November peak, but it remains more than double where it was at the start of October.
Nebraska reported 406 confirmed new virus cases Sunday to give the state 176,026 in total. That is significantly below the average of 1,051.14 new cases per day the state has been reporting over the past week.
The state reported 1,760 deaths on Sunday after an error in the data was corrected over the weekend. That is 57 higher than it was last Wednesday.
Across the state 3,079 virus vaccines were administered on Saturday. The state has administered just over half of the 141,428 vaccine doses it has received.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The average number of daily coronavirus infections has mostly leveled off in South Dakota as health officials reported 181 new infections Monday.
The number of infections reported on Mondays by the Department of Health has typically been lower than other days of the week because testing slows over the weekend. Over the past two weeks, the state has seen its average number of daily infections remain mostly constant. In the last seven days, the average has been 321.
However, the state has seen its rate of deaths per capita rise to the fifth-highest in the country after a surge of cases in November rose the tally of people who died from COVID-19 to 1,585. There were no deaths reported on Monday.
In good news, the state has recorded one of the nation's highest rates of vaccinations against COVID-19. The Department of Health reported that as of Monday, 38,360 people had received at least one dose of a vaccine, meaning that 4.3% of the state's population has been vaccinated.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska lawmaker is proposing new coronavirus protections for meatpacking workers in a new bill introduced Monday.
The proposal by Sen. Tony Vargas, of Omaha, would require meatpacking companies to provide masks and adequate space for social distancing to keep the virus from spreading. Companies would also have to paid sick leave for workers who test positive for the virus, separate from any other paid sick leave.
Vargas introduced a similar measure last summer, but the bill failed to advance. His south Omaha district has a large number of meatpacking workers, and his father died from complications of the coronavirus last year.
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