Gazette Daily News Briefing, July 28
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, July 28.
Thursday will start with a slight chance for showers, but if you don't get up especially early you can pretend that never happened. According to the National Weather Service after 7 a.m. it will be mostly sunny in the Cedar Rapids area with a high near 81 degrees. On Thursday night it will be mostly clear, with a low of around 58 degrees.
The debate over school resource officers appears like it will continue awhile longer.
The city of Cedar Rapids is offering to fully fund two additional school resource officers to do work at Cedar Rapids middle schools after the school board voted earlier this month to remove those officers.
In a letter to the school board — obtained by The Gazette — dated Tuesday and signed by Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell, the two additional school resource officers could start their day at the Cedar Rapids Police Department to serve middle schools.
These additional officers would bring the total number of police in Cedar Rapids schools back up to seven, where it had been.
It remains to be seen whether this will move the needle for the Cedar Rapids School Board. Part of the reason the board voted to remove the officers are statistics showing that there is a racial disparity in the way students are disciplined when resource officers are present.
Tests have confirmed a brain-eating amoeba was present in a southwest Iowa lake where a Missouri resident was sickened last month.
That person, who swam at Lake of Three Fires State Park in the last two weeks of June, died of the parasitic infection July 7.
Several state agencies completed testing of the water at Lake of Three Fires, 25 miles east of Clarinda, and confirmed the presence of Naegleria fowleri amoeba that can cause a rare and often fatal brain infection.
Now that testing is complete, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources will reopen the beach at Lake of Three Fires, which has been closed since July 8. The beach will be posted with signs warning swimmers of the presence of the parasite in the water and the risk of infection.
The state does not plan to test other recreational waters.
Swimmers can reduce their risk by keeping their head out of the water and using nose clips or plugging their nose when going underwater.
Iowa saw the number of new COVID-19 cases continue to increase in the past week, reporting 5,924 new cases in the past week, up 12 percent from the previous week’s 5,301 new cases. This continues the upward trend in cases in July after cases in June hovered at under 4,000 a week.
Experts believe that a highly contagious version of the omicron variant now dominant in Iowa and the rest of the nation is leading to the increase in cases.
As of Wednesday, 84 Iowa counties — including Linn and Johnson — are experiencing “high” COVID-19 community transmission, compared to 78 counties last week.
In one bit of good news, hospitalizations for the disease went down slightly this week now at 249, from last week’s 256. There were also far fewer deaths from the disease, with 23 new covid deaths reported.
