Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:55 a.m. CDT

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Fourteen residents at a Cedar Rapids nursing home that has been at the center of the coronavirus pandemic in Iowa have died. The facility’s owner says 60 residents at Heritage Specialty Care and 30 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19. That represents roughly half the residents and a quarter of the staff at the facility. Of the 60 infected residents, the home says that 14 have recovered and another 14 had died as of Friday. A statement from the home says the “hearts, thoughts and prayers of our Heritage staff and our organization go out to the families of these special loved ones.”

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — The city of Ankeny is asking for the public’s help to help protect essential city employees by making and donating protective cloth masks for workers. The city says in a written release that it’s especially concerned for the safety of public works, utilities, park maintenance and office staff. The homemade masks would also go to fire, emergency medical staff and police officer to wear while in their stations in between calls. Those emergency responders will wear professional personal protection equipment while on calls where they come in contact with the public.

UNDATED (AP) — A gaping spread in statistical models for the coronavirus pandemic has injected a political element into the scientific endeavor. Governors in some states have cited the direst forecasts in issuing stay-at-home orders. Other elected officials have seized on more optimistic figures to justify their calls to loosen restrictions. The federal government doesn’t have a national clearinghouse for virus models. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t publicly released any coronavirus models of its own or identified a modeling consensus for states to follow. Meanwhile, some states are tapping local experts to cobble together their own models.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An infectious and fatal strain of bird flu has been confirmed in a commercial turkey flock in northeast South Carolina, the first case of the more serious strain of the disease in the United States since it was reported in a Tennessee chicken flock in 2017. A less severe strain of bird flu had been detected along the North Carolina and South Carolina state recently but the case in Chesterfield County, South Carolina discovered on Monday was found to be a more fatal and easily spread strain. More than 32,000 turkeys in the flock were euthanized. The USDA confirmed it Thursday.