DES MOINES – Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Wednesday, signed a new Public Health Disaster proclamation that modifies existing public health measures to provide clarity and simplify the measures applicable to recreational activities and fitness centers.  

Except for high school, collegiate, or professional sporting or recreational gatherings, the proclamation only permits sporting and recreational activities when all participants in the gathering—including athletes, coaches, or instructors—maintain six feet of physical distance at all times.  Activities where closer contact is required or reasonably unavoidable, such as a wrestling meet or basketball game, are prohibited. Spectators are also limited at all gatherings to two per athlete and must be social distanced six feet apart. And all participants, except for athletes, must wear masks. These requirements also apply to group classes or activities at fitness centers and gyms.  

The proclamation does not change any measures in place for high school-sponsored, collegiate, or professional sporting or recreational activities. High school sports and extracurricular activities continue to be permitted, even where close contact may occur. But spectators at games or events are limited to two per student and are required to wear a mask. 

The proclamation was effective immediately and continues to expire on December 10, 2020.  The full proclamation is online its entirety.

(Radio Iowa) – The board that governs the three state universities will keep its tuition freeze in place for the spring semester. Board of Regents president Michael Richards made the announcement during the board’s virtual meeting yesterday (Wednesday). “In June, the board voted to keep tuition and mandatory fees flat for the fall 2020 semester for all students,” Richards said. “…The board will not be increasing tuition or mandatory fees for the rest of the academic year.”

Richards says the year-long pause in tuition hikes is the right thing to do in the midst of a pandemic, but he says the board intends to resume its five-year plan of gradual tuition increases, starting in the fall of 2021. The presidents of Iowa, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa says they are facing financial and demographic headwinds that make tuition increases in the next few years critical. University of Iowa president Bruce Harreld, who is retiring this summer, says he strongly believes raising tuition next fall is the right thing to do.

“Tuition has to go up,” he says, “or the quality is going to go down.” Iowa State University president Wendy Winterstein says her institution is dealing with a 150-million dollar hit from the pandemic. “We made it through…those early months of Covid-19 with our general operating budget relatively intact,” she said, “but we’re facing some extremely challenging financial times right now.”

University of Northern Iowa president Mark Nook says the universities need to prepare for the number of high school graduates to drop dramatically in five to six years — as birth rates dipped during the 2008 recession.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CST

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Some Republican governors are changing course on their coronavirus pandemic response as coronavirus cases skyrocket nationwide in the days after the election. Chief executives in Iowa, Utah and North Dakota are among those who have issued mask mandates and other restrictions in recent days. GOP governors in Ohio and West Virginia have also recently strengthened existing mask mandates, while Mississippi’s governor expanded the state’s partial mandate to cover more counties. Governors who long resisted health officials’ calls for widespread mask wearing now find themselves in the throes of a crisis and forced to follow science or risk making a dangerous situation worse through their inaction.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A 19-year-old Davenport man is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a man last month. Sherral Jermaine Tolbert is charged in the Oct. 25 death of 19-year-old Lavonta Baker in Davenport. Police found Baker dead in a car after he had been shot several times. Tolbert was served with the first-degree murder warrant Monday at the Scott County Jail, where he was being held for allegedly violating his probation on an earlier conviction. He had been sentenced in March to three years of supervised probation for numerous felony convictions.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa set a record for deaths blamed on the coronavirus as new confirmed cases and the number of people being treated in hospitals remained high. The state Department of Public Health reported 40 deaths and 3,896 confirmed new cases in the past 24 hours as of Wednesday morning. That brings the total number of deaths to 2,064 and the total cases to 194,479. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 also continued to increase, with a record 1,527 people being treated. There were 283 people in intensive care units. In the last week, one in every 107 people in Iowa was diagnosed with the coronavirus. That’s the third-highest rate in the nation, behind North Dakota and South Dakota.

IOWA CITY– Officials with the Iowa Dept. of Corrections, Wednesday night, said Robert William Sirovy was pronounced dead, likely due to complications related to COVID-19 and other preexisting medical conditions at approximately 8:02 p.m. on Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He had been transported there recently from the Anamosa State Penitentiary due to his declining health. Sirovy was 64 years old at the time of his death.  Sirovy had been incarcerated for multiple convictions of violation of Iowa Code 901A.2(3), Sexual Predator with Prior Convictions and Enhancements from Mahaska County. His sentence began on October 20, 2006, and his discharge date would have been December 14, 2132.

WOODWARD, Iowa (AP) — Officials have identified a 7-year-old boy who died after being hit by a vehicle in a central Iowa school parking lot. Des Moines station WHO-TV reports the accident happened around 3:45 p.m. Monday in the parking lot of Woodward-Granger High School in Dallas County. Authorities say 7-year-old Charlie Brewer walked into the path of a vehicle and was run over. Medics and Dallas County Sheriff’s deputies responded and found the child dead at the scene. Officials continue to investigate the accident.

(Radio Iowa) – The C-E-O of the state’s largest hospital says if the number of Iowans testing positive for Covid continues to accelerate, he expects to implement the next phase of a “surge” plan — and expand the Iowa City hospital’s ability to accept more patients. “We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the state’s needs.”

Suresh Gunasekaran — the C-E-O of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — briefed members of the State Board of Regents Wednesday. The hospital’s intensive care unit has already been expanded as part of the first phase of dealing with a surge in Covid patients. Ninety-three patients with the coronavirus were in Gunasekaran’s hospital Wednesday — a record — but he says there are still open beds.

“The reason we make these changes in advance, the reason we create this capacity in advance is because we don’t want, when other communities get overwhelmed, for us not to be able to take their patients,” Gunasekaran says. “I’m not going to list all of the different communities, but I will tell you on a daily basis individual rural hospitals hit their maximum and immediately call us and we take the patients.” Gunasekaran says hundreds of hospitalizations from the Iowa City area have been avoided through expansion of the hospital’s testing clinic. The local clinic has the capacity to run a thousand tests a day and often provides results within six-to-eight hours — so Covid-positive patients get assessed earlier and get treatment earlier.

“When you compare our region to other regions, the rate of hospitalizations for their positive-tested patients are so much higher than we and if we didn’t have this resource outside of the hospital, I really do think UIHC would have been overwhelmed long ago,” he says, “with great consequence to the health care system in Iowa.” The hospital was recently featured on N-B-C News after a man from central Missouri was flown all the way to Iowa City for life-saving emergency brain surgery. Gunasekaran says that shows the hospital’s surge plan is working.

“The truth of it today at UIHC, regardless of what’s going on, we continue to create capacity and there are open beds today at UIHC. We are not overwhelmed,” Gunasekaran says, “But if we had not been working on creating this additional capacity, we would be full.” The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — the U-I-H-C — has expanded its intensive care unit to 116 beds and, if conditions worsen, the I-C-U may expand to 200 beds. On Wednesday, hospitals across the state were caring for more than 15-hundred Covid patients and 286 of those patients were in an intensive care unit.

DES MOINES – Governor Kim Reynolds Wednesday, announced an additional allocation of CARES Act funds to support Iowa renters and homeowners at-risk of eviction or foreclosure due to a COVID-19-related loss of income. The Iowa Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention program has now been allocated a total of $37.4 million, with approximately $8 million remaining available. The deadline to apply for rent and mortgage assistance as well as utility assistance through the Iowa Residential Utility Disruption Prevention program is Dec. 4, 2020.

“At no fault of their own, many Iowans are struggling to pay their bills as a result of lost income due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Gov. Reynolds. “Today’s announcement bolsters the Iowa Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention program, which is helping Iowa homeowners and renters make their rent or mortgage payments. Our team will continue to assist Iowans in accessing this critical assistance as the Dec. 4^th deadline approaches.”

“Nearly 11,000 renters and 500 homeowners have received assistance with their rent or mortgage payments and another 2,800 have applied for utility assistance to date,” said IEDA and IFA Executive Director Debi Durham. “Our goal is to assist as many Iowans that have been impacted by COVID-19 and are at-risk of eviction, foreclosure or utility disruption as possible.”

The programs are funded through federal CARES Act funds, which requires that all funds be expended by Dec. 30, 2020.

To be eligible for either program:

• Must have a documented COVID-19-related loss of income on or after March 17, 2020.
• Household income at the time of application may not exceed 80% median family income, which varies by county and household size and is included in the applications.

  Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Program
  The program provides current renters and homeowners who are at-risk of eviction or foreclosure due to a COVID-19 loss of income with rent or mortgage assistance for up to four months. The total maximum in assistance per household is the lesser of $3,200 for rental assistance and $3,600 for mortgage assistance or four months actual rent/mortgage payment amounts. Payments are made directly to landlords and mortgage servicers and applied to the applicant’s account.

  The state has allocated $37.4 million of federal CARES Act funds to the Iowa Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention program to date.

  Residential Utility Disruption Prevention Program
  The program provides eligible households with up to $2,000 towards electric, natural gas and water bills if they are at risk of disconnection due to an inability to pay due to a COVID-19 related loss of income. Payments are made directly to utility providers and applied to the applicant’s account.

  The state allocated approximately $14.5 million of federal CARES Act funds for utility assistance programs.

  For a full list of eligibility requirements and to apply for either program, visit iowahousingrecovery.com through Dec. 4, 2020.

(Radio Iowa) – Forecasters say drought conditions that spread across much of Iowa earlier this year will likely linger well into winter. Meteorologist Dennis Todey, director of the U-S-D-A’s Midwest Climate Hub — based in Ames, says it doesn’t appear there will be many chances to replenish moisture levels in the soil before things begin to freeze up.  “We had a very dry end of summer and end to fall,” Todey says. “It’s been great for harvest but not good for soil moisture recharge. By this point, it’s very unlikely we’ll get the soil moisture recharged to where we want it to be.”

Despite a warming trend in Iowa this week, Todey says winter will be here in a little over a month. “Our soils are going to go in pretty dry and when the cold does come, we will freeze up and we’re not going to have much chance to recharge soil moisture at that rate,” he says. The drier conditions typically mean a quicker start to the planting season in the new year. “When spring comes around and we do thaw and we want to get to ag activity, there’s a better chance of being able to get moving earlier,” Todey says.

“Downside is that we’ve got some fairly dry soils that we’re going to need to put some moisture in. That’s my bigger concern with this whole situation, these dry soils that we have going on into winter and into the early spring.” Todey says another danger with dry soils is that frost can get much deeper and cause damage to pipes and plants.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A 19-year-old Davenport man is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a man last month. Sherral Jermaine Tolbert is charged in the Oct. 25 death of 19-year-old Lavonta Baker in Davenport. Police found Baker dead in a car after he had been shot several times.

Tolbert was served with the first-degree murder warrant Monday at the Scott County Jail, where he was being held for allegedly violating his probation on an earlier conviction. He had been sentenced in March to three years of supervised probation for numerous felony convictions.

An accident just before 7-a.m. Wednesday (Today) in Pottawattamie County, resulted in a woman from Harrison County to the hospital. The Iowa State Patrol reports 72-year old Lorene Clark, from Pisgah, was traveling south on I-29, when for reasons unknown, her pickup truck drove into the west ditch, struck a sign for mile marker 65, and then a tree in the ditch. The Ford F-150 caught fire and became fully engulfed in flames, which were extinguished by Crescent Fire Dept. personnel.

Clark was helped out of her vehicle by a passing motorist and an Iowa DOT Highway Helper, prior to the arrival of law enforcement and emergency personnel. She was transported by Crescent Rescue to the UNMC in Omaha. Authorities say she was wearing a seat belt. The accident remains under investigation. The State Patrol was assisted at the scene by the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Department.

The Atlantic Community School District Board of Education met Wednesday afternoon in the Middle School Library, and voted unanimously to extend the current district-imposed mandate with regard to face masks/facial coverings, until Dec. 10th. The previous mandate was set to expire on the 23rd of November. (The recorded meeting can be viewed HERE)

The Board will meet again on Dec. 9th to revisit the policy, which the Board agreed has reduced the need to quarantine students and staff, and cut down on the number of active cases of COVID-19. Superintendent Steve Barber said the first week the district was affected by a positive case was the week of September 24th. The was the high water mark for cases in the district.

From Oct. 1st through the 22nd, Barber said the cases ranged from 3-to 4 cases. Since then, it’s been from 1-to 4 each week on a Thursday. “We ranged from quarantined staff pre-face mandate (requirement), from 3-to 11, and quarantined students from 35-to 93. Since then,” he said, “our staff has ranged from 2-to 7 quarantined , and from 24-to 61 students quarantined. On the 29th of October, our county (Positivity rate) was 22.1%, and as of this (Wednesday) morning,” he said, “It was 18.8%.”

Barber said also, “There’s been cases where we’ve had a positive case, where masks have prevented quarantine of some students or staff for that matter, so that has happened.” The problem area is at Washington Elementary School where masks must be worn the most out of all district buildings, because there is no room to social distance like there is with other facilities. The Board was unable to come to a consensus on how to relax or improve upon those conditions. Face coverings are still required in all buildings where social distancing is not possible.

In discussion over the matter, Board member Josh McLaren expressed gratitude to teachers, staff and administrators for their efforts to contain and control the spread of the virus, because “What we’re doing is working” inside the schools. McLaren said he’s not in support of a mask mandate to go any further but “I do still hold the position that [The governor] hasn’t changed anything with regard to quarantine and those types of things. My belief is that I think we have to keep it going through this semester just because strictly based upon the quarantine.”

Board President Jenny Williams said she has a hard time wearing a mask and doesn’t have to wear one at work. She said she’s been opposed to a mask mandate from the beginning, but “Had to compromise because of all of the communication the Board was getting [from the public] via text, e-mail, walk-ins.” She said extending the mask mandate was “not an easy decision.”

Superintendent Barber said administrators will continue to try and find a better solution for the Washington School, in the interim between now and Dec. 9th.