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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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.
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.
Roughly half of Iowa adults could become eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations as soon as next week, now that the state has decided to make the shots available to people with certain health conditions.
But health officials in several Iowa counties, who were surprised by the state s announcement, said Friday they don t expect to have enough vaccine to handle the influx right away.
The Iowa Department of Public Health announced Thursday evening that the state would make the major expansion of eligibility, starting Monday. Hundreds of thousands of Iowans have at least one of the new eligibility conditions, which include obesity, high blood pressure, pregnancy, smoking and diabetes.