DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) – The total number of people who died from the new coronavirus in Iowa exceeded 3,900, according to state data as of Saturday morning, as the number of people tested fell for the holidays.
On Saturday, at 10:30 a.m., the Iowa Department of Public Health said 709 people who tested positive for COVID-19 were added to the state’s total, which is now 283,144. 243,218 people are considered to have recovered from the disease.
TestIowa, the state-run testing program, has been shut down for parts of the New Year’s holiday. This was probably a factor that contributed to the reduction in the number of people who tested positive and to a smaller number of tests in general. A similar decrease in tests compared to other days was observed near the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November.
Another 48 people who died due to COVID-19 were added to the Iowa total, which is 3,946 people since the beginning of the pandemic.
The number of people hospitalized due to the disease in Iowa was 572 since Saturday morning, a net decrease of three. 119 of these people were in intensive care units, a net increase of two. 60 of these patients require the use of a ventilator, a net decrease of three. An additional 88 people were admitted to Iowa hospitals during the 24-hour reporting period, a rate that corresponds to the last few days of data.
Another 2,056 people had the results of tests reported by public and private laboratories in the last 24 hours, a significantly smaller number than in recent days. The positivity rate for this batch of tests was 34.5%, lower than the 46.1% of the previous day. The positivity rate calculated using this method may differ from the number on the state 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 1,361,710 people in Iowa have been tested since the beginning of the pandemic.
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