DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) – The number of people tested for the new coronavirus in Iowa showed a sharp drop when state-run facilities shut down for Christmas, according to new data on Saturday.
As of 10:30 a.m., the Iowa Department of Public Health said an additional 299 people had tested positive for COVID-19 since the same time on Friday, bringing the state’s total to 274,313. 277,670 people are considered to have recovered from the disease.
TestIowa, the state-run testing program, closed early on Thursday, December 24, and remained closed for the Christmas holidays on Friday. This was likely a contributing factor to the reduced number of positive tests and the smaller number of tests overall. A similar drop in the number of tests, compared to other days, was seen around Thanksgiving in late November.
No additional people were added to the state total who died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. The total number of people who died from the disease during the pandemic is 3,744.
The total number of people in hospitals in Iowa because of COVID-19 was 558, a net decrease of 42 people. This is the lowest number of people hospitalized for the virus since October 25. 114 of those people are in intensive care, a net decrease of seven. 63 of those patients require the use of a ventilator, a net reduction of six. 76 people were recently admitted to hospitals in Iowa for the disease, fewer than the three previous reporting days.
Another 1,247 people had reported test results from public and private laboratories in the past 24 hours, a significantly lower number than in the past few days. The positivity rate for these batch of tests was 24.0%, the second day in a row at a rate less than 30% based on this calculation. This is the first time there have been two days in a row with a positivity rate below 30% since late October. The positivity rate calculated with this method may differ from the number on the state’s coronavirus dashboard, due to the fact that it uses the number of people tested, not the total number of tests, including people who have been tested repeatedly.
A total of 1,339,501 people have been tested in Iowa since the start of the pandemic.
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