Iowa added 41 COVID-19 deaths Thursday as three more long-term care facilities reported virus outbreaks. The Iowa Department of Public Health reported 3,331 new positive COVID-19 cases as of 10 a.m. to bring the total to 222,278. Long-term care facilities have been particularly hard hit, with cases in them accounting for 1,038 of the state’s 2,312 deaths. The three new facilities reporting outbreaks brings the total that have been hit to 152.
The historically close race for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District seat has gotten even closer. Democrat Rita Hart has cut Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ lead to eight votes out of more than 394,400 cast, with recount boards in all but one of the district’s 24 counties reporting the results of their recounts. On Wednesday, Hart netted 26 votes in Scott County and another vote in Jasper County after their recount boards adjourned. Clinton County’s recount board will meet on Saturday to finish reviewing about 5,000 absentee ballots.
The Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska is creating the nation’s largest tribal national park on a forested bluff overlooking the Missouri River and a historic site of its people. The tribe says the 444-acre park will allow it to tell the story of the Ioway people and provide a rustic getaway where people can hike, camp and bird-watch. The Ioway Tribal National Park will overlook a historic trading village once used by the Ioway people to barter for buffalo hides and pipestones with other tribes. That site includes three burial mounds that date back 3,000 years.
A University of Iowa fraternity has been suspended for hazing, with a report citing verbal abuse and and an incident where new members were required to drink dangerously high amounts of alcohol. The university says the violations were by the Acacia Fraternity. The suspension lasts through 2024. One allegation said that in the spring semester, new members were ordered to stay in the fraternity house attic until they consumed alcohol that included 60 to 90 cans of beer, along with vodka and a gallon of a drink called Jungle Juice. Several new members got sick.
Church officials say a Roman Catholic professor will return to teaching and the ministry, with restrictions, after an inquiry found he misbehaved sexually in the 1990s but not against minors. A Diocese of Des Moines investigation found that the allegations against the Rev. Robert “Bud” Grant did not involve a minor because the complainant was “above majority age” at the time. The diocese says Grant engaged in behavior in the early 1990s that violated the 6th Commandment ban on adultery and his priestly promises. Grant is expected to return to teaching at St. Ambrose University in Davenport in the spring.
