(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch and is unaltered.
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COVID hospitalizations increase despite fewer infections reported by Iowa [1]
['Jared Strong', 'More From Author', '- December']
Date: 2022-12
The number of people who are infected by the coronavirus and are receiving inpatient treatment at Iowa hospitals is up about 6% this week and has almost doubled since a month ago, according to federal hospitalization data.
The COVID-19 hospitalization increase in Iowa runs counter to state data that show an overall decrease in the state’s infection rate in the past week. On Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services reported 3,493 new infections among those who were not previously infected.
That’s a 6% decrease from a week ago. Those new cases that are reported to federal health officials do not include reinfections of people who contracted the virus earlier in the pandemic.
The total number of new documented infections by the state might have been as high as 4,789, based on state testing data. That is a 3% decrease from a week ago. The state does not track the results of rapid, at-home tests.
There were 272 infected people receiving inpatient treatment at Iowa hospitals on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Of those, 31 people were under intensive care — nearly double the number from a week ago.
Hospitalizations related to COVID-19 have been steadily increasing in the past month, according to the New York Times. Those hospitalizations were averaging about 147 a month ago and have recently climbed to an average of 276.
On Wednesday, the state also reported 44 new deaths related to the virus. It’s unclear when they occurred. That weekly number is about double what the state has been reporting for months. A total of 10,387 infected people have died since the start of the pandemic.
About a third of Iowa counties have a medium or high risk from the virus, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of infection and hospitalization data. Those areas are spread throughout the state but do not include the Des Moines metro area.
Tests of metro area wastewater show that virus loads have been increasing since early November and are among the highest they’ve been this year. Still, the concentrations are less than a third of what they were in January, when the state’s infection rate peaked.
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