Gazette Daily News Podcast, August 13
This is Stephen Colbert from the Gazette Digital News Desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, August 13, 2020.
Today will be partly sunny with a high near 86. It’ll cool off to 65 tonight. The national weather service originally forecast a chance of thunderstorms for most of the second half of the week, but that projection has gotten less and less, and now it’s just a 20% chance tonight and a 30% chance on saturday.
The number of coronavirus cases in Iowa rose yesterday to 49,702 total cases, and the total deaths attributed to coronavirus stand at 949.
Test Iowa sites reopened yesterday after recovering from storm damage. sites in Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Marshalltown reopened for testing between 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday. Regular testing hours, which are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., will resume Thursday.
These Test Iowa locations sustained severe damage due to weather conditions across the state this week, forcing the sites to close.
State officials announced that Test Iowa will honor appointments for those who scheduled tests at the impacted sites earlier this week. They are not required to reschedule their appointments.
Iowa long-term care facilities are seeing repeat coronavirus outbreaks. A couple of Iowa long-term care facilities are experiencing second outbreaks of COVID-19.
The Iowa Veterans Home in Marshall County reappeared on the state’s long-term care facility outbreak list after being removed from the list on June 12. The facility has nine cases of COVID-19. Calvin Community in Polk County has also reappeared on the list with three cases. They were previously removed from the list by June 25.
New to the outbreak list is Good Samaritan Society in Winnebago County, which has five cases. Solon Nursing Care Center had one new recovery with 15 total recovered.
You can find this and the rest of our coronavirus coverage at our dedicated coronavirus page, TheGazette.com/coronavirus.
Utilities make progress on restoring power. As swaths of Eastern Iowa — including downtown Cedar Rapids — have blinked back to life, tens of thousands of electric utility customers in Linn and Johnson counties remained in the dark Wednesday evening.
In a Wednesday afternoon statement, Alliant said power had been restored for close to 75,000 customers with most living in Williamsburg, Marengo and Jefferson. Power also was restored for a section of northeast Cedar Rapids.
Cedar Rapids hospitals resume normal operations while area clinics remain without power. Hospitals in the Corridor were beginning to resume normal operations on Wednesday after this week’s storm, but the widespread damage likely will keep area clinics from resuming services in the coming days.
With the power restored to both Cedar Rapids hospitals by Wednesday afternoon, officials with Mercy Medical Center and UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital said they would resume elective surgeries and other services that temporarily were unavailable as a result of the storm.
The hospitals were relying on backup generators earlier this week to manage critical and emergency patient care after the storm caused serious damage to the city’s power grid. In Iowa City, the main campus at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics did not lose power. Officials said some generators were started and put into use as a precautionary measure.
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