Gazette Daily News Briefing, October 24 and October 25
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for the weekend of October 24 and October 25.
Your weekend weather will start out calm and cold, and it will transition to remaining cold with some additional rain and snow. According to the National Weather Service forecast there will be a high near 41 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area Saturday with partly sunny skies. On Saturday night it will be mostly cloudy, with a low of 32 degrees.
On Sunday, showers will become likely, mainly after 1 p.m. When it isn’t raining, it will be mostly cloudy with a high near 42 degrees. On Sunday night into Monday there will be a chance that the rain in the area will turn into snow, but this is expected to be a wintry mix with rain later on.
Iowa has broken the record for the highest number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients more than once this past week.
The spike in new novel coronavirus cases in recent weeks has driven a record number of sick patients into hospitals across the state. Over the past week, Iowa continuously has reached new highs in the number of people hospitalized with the virus, topping off at 536 total patients as of Friday morning. Although this has mostly avoided Eastern Iowa in the most recent spike, hospitals could run out of beds if trends continue to worsen.
However, local health officials interviewed by the Gazette said their main concern is not with hospital capacity, or personal protective gear, as was the case earlier in the pandemic. Their main concern is cumulative strain on the state’s medical workforce. Several hospitals in the state are working with reduced workforces due to budget constraints on top of increasing demand.
Local hospital officials report the vast majority of new cases have come as a result of community spread — but not as a result of super spreader events or in public spaces such as restaurants or schools. The primary recent culprit appears to be exposure during large family gatherings, such as weddings.
Iowans who exhaust their standard unemployment benefits and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation no longer will receive State Extended Benefits after Oct. 31, Iowa Workforce Development said Friday afternoon.
State Extended Benefits gives unemployed residents an additional 13 weeks of benefits or 50 percent of the person’s original unemployment benefit total — whichever one is less — after 26 weeks of standard benefits and 13 weeks of pandemic extended benefits.
The program went into effect in May when the 13-week average for the insured unemployment rate rose above 5 percent.
Crews in Cedar Rapids have completed their first pass of collecting tree debris dragged out to the public right of way — a milestone reached in over two months of cleaning up after the hurricane-force derecho that hit the city on Aug. 10. While the initial pass focused on clearing bulky debris piles to make roads more accessible, additional passes will focus on picking up debris from smaller streets such as cul-de-sacs, dead ends and private roads, as well as returning to areas with a high volume of debris that crews missed in the first pass.That work is expected to take crews into the winter months.
