(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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State’s COVID infection rate, hospitalizations decline slightly [1]
['Jared Strong', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2023-01-11
The number of documented COVID-19 infections in Iowa has been roughly steady for the past two weeks but included a slight decrease in Wednesday’s report by the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.
The state reported 2,201 new infections in the past week among those who were not previously infected by the coronavirus, a 2% decrease from the previous week.
The total number of documented infections might have been as high as 2,781 based on state testing data. Those positive tests include reinfections of people who were already infected at least once by the coronavirus, which the state does not report in its new case counts to federal health officials. That was an 8% decrease from last week’s report.
Those who are infected and receiving inpatient treatment at Iowa hospitals also declined about 10% from a week ago, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There were 222 hospitalized on Wednesday, and 23 of them were under intensive care.
The state also reported 45 new deaths on Wednesday, one of the largest weekly figures in months. It’s unclear when the deaths occurred. A total of 10,508 infected people have died since the start of the pandemic.
December was the deadliest month last year since February 2022, when the state’s infection rate was still subsiding from its pandemic peak last January. At least 159 infected people died in December, according to state data, but it can be weeks before deaths are fully tallied.
The lowest number of deaths in a month in 2022 was 45 in April, state data show.
The virus poses a low risk in about two-thirds of the state, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report last week. Its analysis of infection and hospitalization data shows medium and high risks near the four corners of the state and in swaths of east-central and west-central Iowa.
The new omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 has been the leading source of coronavirus infections in the country’s Northeast — where it accounts for about 73% of new cases — but it only accounts for about 6% of infections in the Midwest region that includes Iowa, according to the CDC’s most recent report that tracks variants.
The subvariant is the most transmissible so far, according to the World Health Organization, but it is not believed to cause more severe symptoms than previous iterations.
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