DES MOINES, Iowa — Editor's Note: The video above is from June 22, 2021.
Starting July 7, the Iowa Department of Public Health will transition from updating its COVID-19 dashboard several times a day to once a week, according to a document shared with local public health departments.
Local 5 found the document was being shared on Facebook Wednesday morning. Sarah Ekstrand with IDPH confirmed the document's authenticity later that afternoon, saying it was shared with local public health departments last week. The document does not have a date listed on it.
The IDPH is making this change because other states are doing the same thing. The document even notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has changed their own reporting schedule.
Several changes will be made for how the state relays COVID activity to Iowans and how public health officials perform routine case investigations.
Starting Thursday, the state will put more focus on case investigation on outbreaks and vulnerable settings, like long-term care centers. It will end routine case investigation calls for all positive reports, according to the document.
The state will still require LTC facilities to report outbreaks of three or more residents and staff.
The document also touches on the discontinuation of TestIowa clinics. All state-run clinics are set to close by July 16 due to the drop in testing and case numbers.
These changes will impact "several of the datasets and pages on the coronavirus.iowa.gov website," according to the document.
Changes to the website include:
- Long Term Care page will be removed, and historical data archived
- Number of Long Term Care with a reportable outbreak each week will be listed on the main page
- Serology page will be removed from the live site, and historical data archived
- Occupation data will be removed from the live site, and historical data archived
- TestIowa Assessment page will be removed from the live site, and historical data archived
- Underlying condition data will be removed from the live site, but archived
- All positive and negative test results will continue to be reported along with age, gender, race, ethnicity and county of residence as received to public health
Here's what will stay on the site:
- Positive Case Analysis
- Deaths
- Vaccine Administration and Allocation data
- Hospital/RMCC info
Read the full document below
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