A fourth Black Hawk County long-term care facility now has a COVID-19 outbreak. Pillar of Cedar Valley is listed by the state as having five cases between its residents and staff…the first came when a staff member tested positive at the beginning of last month. There are now 37 outbreaks at long-term care facilities in Iowa.
State health officials reported five more deaths and 323 additional cases of coronavirus yesterday, compared with the day before. The Iowa Department of Public Health says 351 people have died from COVID-19 in the state and 14,651 have tested positive for the disease.
The Iowa legislature is set to resume its session that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March…when lawmakers do return to Des Moines on June 3rd, setting the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st will be the key priority, according to Iowa Speaker of the House Pat Grassley. Grassley is a New Hartford Republican who was on KXEL Live & Local last Friday morning; hear the full conversation by going to kxel.com.
Records show Iowa’s executive branch has signed off on $45 million worth of emergency purchase orders for isolation gowns, masks, face shields, goggles and other equipment from mid-March through April alone. The deals include 590,000 masks that were purchased directly from China to be flown to an Ankeny warehouse.
Authorities are investigating a deadly shooting Friday night in Waterloo. Police were called to UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital about 8:30 p.m. Friday on a report of a shooting victim. The man was taken to the hospital in a private vehicle. He died a short time after arriving. An autopsy has been scheduled at the State Medical Examiner’s Office. No other details have yet been publicly released.
Authorities say a body was bound on the shore of the Mississippi River one mile north of Bellevue…the Bellevue Police Department recovered the body and turned it over to the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office. An autopsy will be conducted at the state facility in Ankeny.
Authorities say three white men attacked a black man in Des Moines and that one of the assailants made racist comments. Police say it happened just before 3:30 early Saturday morning as the man was headed to his girlfriend’s house. The victim was transported to a hospital with what police described as significant, but non-life-threatening, injuries to the left side of his face, eye and hands. Court documents say the man did not know his attackers.
The pandemic has led to Iowa’s museums and related attractions being closed to the public; that closure will be at least through May 27th. That has meant a loss of revenue, but the Waterloo Center for the Arts is one of the local groups partnering with the Shirt Shack company to help make up some of that shortfall. Craig Laue, development and marketing manager for the Waterloo Center for the Arts, talked about the project on KXEL Live & Local; listen to the podcast of the conversation at kxel.com. A link to order shirts is on their website and Facebook page… the deadline is June 4th.
The stay-at-home directive has led to a significant drop in passenger traffic at the Eastern Iowa Airport—officials say April traffic was down 97 percent compared with the year before. That means only 1,500 people boarded a plane in Cedar Rapids last month. However, there is already a bit of an upward trend, here and across the country, this month. Officials say many airlines now require masks on flights. If a passenger boarding the plane does not have a mask, the airport will provide one.
Two Cedar Valley city councils will be holding public hearings tonight on issuing bonds for capital improvements. In Cedar Falls, the city is planning to sell $3.5 million in general obligation capital loan notes for a variety of projects; the virtual meeting will begin at 7 p.m. Meanwhile in Waterloo, the proposed bond total is $13 million…the largest amount, $3.7 million, will go toward more repairs and improvements to the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center…another $2 million will be to match a state grant for road reconstruction near the proposed Lost Island Theme Park…while more than a million dollars is earmarked for University Avenue reconstruction, and for Northeast Industrial Park development.
