Admissions fall for the eighth week in a row

The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa has dropped for the eighth week in a row, with new reported cases following a similar drop, according to data from the Iowa Department of Public Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There were 121 such admissions to the state since Wednesday’s update, nearly two months after Iowa’s most recent peak of 1,010 COVID-19 patients on January 17. That’s a drop of almost 90% over the last eight weeks.

There are also fewer people with COVID-19 who need intensive care in Iowa – 17 as of Wednesday, about a third fewer than the 25 COVID-19 patients on Iowa intensive care units last week.

New reported cases also fell again this week. There were 1,008 additional COVID-19 cases reported in Wednesday’s update, or an average of 144 per day.

This figure will not include asymptomatic individuals who have not been tested or individuals who have not reported their home test results to the health department. But it is still a drop of more than 40% compared to last week and far from the record-breaking 38,574 cases reported in a single week two months ago.

The sharp fall in the pandemic has not yet been shown to have a significant impact on the number of reported deaths per week, which tends to lag behind the trends of cases and hospitalizations, especially because it can take several weeks for the health department to confirm and add new COVID-19 deaths to its public dashboard.

This week, the state reported 87 more COVID-19 deaths, bringing the death toll from the Iowa pandemic to 9,349.

The proportion of Iowans who are fully vaccinated continued to rise at a relatively slow pace – just as last week, the State Department of Health reported an increase of one-tenth of a percentage point.

But more Ioweans continue to receive their booster shots: State data shows that more than 1,000,000 people in Iowa have now received a booster shot. That’s more than half of all fully vaccinated Iowans and just under a third of the state’s population.

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