MUSCATINE, Iowa - The State Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation will expire at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, February 15, 2022. For nearly two years, the proclamation waived specific provisions in Iowa code that allowed the state to shift resources to respond to the public health emergency. As such, the state publicly reported information that was more detailed and frequent than what the agency would typically produce. This allowed the state to respond and shift resources appropriately.
The expiration of the proclamation will result in operational changes related to the state’s pandemic response. State agencies, including the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH), will now manage COVID-19 as part of normal daily business and reallocate resources that have been fully dedicated to the response effort to serve other important needs for Iowans.
IDPH and your Muscatine County Public Health Department remain committed to doing the work we’ve always done around disease surveillance to protect the health of all Iowans. Moving forward the Iowa Department of Public Health will continue to provide critical data to understand COVID-19 prevalence in Iowa. The Muscatine County Public Health Department will refer our communities to IDPH for continued updates on COVID-19 beginning February 16, 2022.
Changes in Published Data:
- Both the coronavirus.iowa.gov and vaccinateiowa.gov websites will be discontinued.
- Weekly COVID-19 data points will be published on the IDPH website beginning February 16, 2022.
- IDPH is no longer requiring Long Term Care facilities to notify them when they have three or more infections in residents, therefore this will no longer be reported publicly by IDPH. Instead, IDPH will use Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) data to identify and assist facilities in infection control.
- Hospital general COVID-19 data is available through the CDC: www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs.htm
Moving Forward the IDPH Website, www.idph.iowa.gov, will Include:
- Positive Cases
- Positive tests since March of 2020 (age/sex/race)
- Deaths since March of 2020
- Case by county
- Positive tests in past 7 days
- Epi Curve since March of 2020
- Variant breakdown by week
- Vaccine Data
- Total series completed
- Booster completed
- County map
- Fully vaccinated (age/sex/race)
Public Health Work Continues
- First COVID-19 data upload to IDPH website will be February 16, 2022
- Access to COVID-19 testing and vaccine remain unchanged.
- At this time, Test Iowa at Home will continue unchanged. www.testiowa.com
- COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutic allocations continue.
For information related to COVID-19, visit www.idph.iowa.gov/ or Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) | CDC.