COVID-19 testing is still lagging behind after holiday period

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CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – The total number of tests for the new coronavirus reported in new data Sunday morning remained low, likely due to the Christmas holidays.

At 10:30 a.m. Sunday, the Iowa Department of Public Health said 620 people in Iowa who had tested positive for COVID-19 were added to the state’s running total, which is 274,933 people since the start of the pandemic. A total of 228,762 people are considered to have recovered from the disease, up from 1,092 since Saturday morning.

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.

An additional person who died from COVID-19 was added to the state total. A total of 3,745 people have died from the virus in the state.

As of Sunday morning, there were 553 people in Iowa hospitals, a net decrease of five. 109 of those people were in intensive care, a net decrease of five. 65 of those patients required the use of a ventilator, a net increase of two. In the past 24 hours, 71 newly admitted patients were reported, comparable to the total on Saturday morning.

Another 1,897 people had reported test results from public and private labs in the past 24 hours, a significantly lower number than most recent days due to Christmas. The positivity rate for this series of tests was 32.7%, higher than the 24% rate in Saturday morning’s report. 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 1,341,398 people have been tested in Iowa since the start of the pandemic.

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