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With half of adult Iowans fully vaccinated against COVID-19, hospitalizations due to the disease down 90% from their height, and viral activity lower than it has been in nearly a year, it is time to lean further into normal, Gov. Kim Reynolds said Wednesday.
Reynolds spoke Wednesday from the Food Bank of Iowa warehouse, where officials announced the scaling back of the Feeding Iowa Task Force. The task force was formed at the start of the pandemic to connect food producers, nonprofits and state agencies to help Iowans facing food insecurity.
The Republican governor also emphasized her decision to end Iowa s participation in the federal government s supplemental unemployment insurance program. The extra $300 in weekly unemployment pay was needed at the beginning of the pandemic, she said, but now Iowa needs workers.
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Neither classroom instruction at schools nor mandatory diversity training for government groups could teach certain concepts, such as that the United States is systemically racist, under a measure headed to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds desk.
The bill places limitations on the ideas that could be included in diversity training at those institutions, resembling a now-reversed executive order that President Donald Trump signed last year to oppose critical race theory, which teaches that racism is interwoven into America s institutions.
Iowa Republicans have called critical race theory racist and said the bill would prevent student indoctrination. Democrats have said the bill would have a chilling effect on needed discussions about racism and sexism, including concepts like structural racism and implicit bias.
Daniel Neal didn t have plans to receive the COVID-19 vaccine that day.
But when an outreach coordinator with Primary Health Care in Des Moines woke him up in his tent that morning, he changed his plans so quickly that he left his wallet, phone and cigarettes behind to go get his jab.
Soon after receiving his shot of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Neal, 37, said he felt good aside from waiting to turn into a zombie or not, he joked.
Neal was one of the first Iowans experiencing homelessness to be vaccinated through Primary Health Care s mobile clinic Thursday.
The clinic was part of a new wave of targeted vaccination clinics created in Iowa to address gaps in access or willingness to accept the pandemic-ending vaccines. The vaccines, which were of very limited supply until recently, have become so plentiful in recent weeks that the state has declined some available doses from the federal government and counties have declined some from the state.
As vaccine demand slows in Iowa, public health pivots to outreach thegazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thegazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Members in the Iowa House take the oath of office in January during the opening day of the Iowa Legislature.
State workplace safety regulators sent a letter last week to the Republican leaders of the Iowa Legislature that says conditions at the Statehouse “may expose workers to COVID-19 hazards.”
The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration conducted an inspection of the Iowa State Capitol on Jan. 26, after labor unions filed a complaint about the conditions there.
The letter from IOSHA says they didn’t find a violation of state law related to COVID-19 mitigation efforts, but inspectors did identify potential hazards. They include social distancing not always being practiced and enforced, temperature checks not being conducted on all people entering the building, employees not being required to report positive coronavirus tests to leadership, and a lack of determining whether positive cases were work-related.