Public health data in Iowa shows signs that the coronavirus infection rate is slowing but the number of people hospitalized and dying with COVID-19 remains high. Some of the ease in case positivity could be due to reduced testing around the Thanksgiving holiday. Some hospital officials were bracing for another surge in positive tests and illness due to Thanksgiving family gatherings. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say Iowa’s positivity rate declined in the past two weeks but remains third in the nation at 41.24%. The average of daily deaths continues to climb. Iowa posted 24 deaths and 1,906 new confirmed cases on Tuesday. Hospitals reported 1,172 patients with COVID-19, up 10 from the day before.
A Texas company has announced it will build a $15 million plant in northwest Iowa that will make environmentally-friendly shipping pallets from corn plant waste, such as stalks, husks and leaves. Corn Board Manufacturing will build the 50,000-square-foot plant on 40 acres west of Odebolt in Sac County. The company makes a wood alternative, named CornBoard, from corn stover, the plant debris that’s typically left in the field after a crop is harvested. The company already uses CornBoard to make ski, snow and skateboard equipment under the Stalk It brand name, as well as indoor and outdoor furniture. Company CEO Lane Segerstrom says construction will begin in the spring and the plant will employ up to 30 people.
A new monthly survey of business leaders in nine Midwest and Plains states suggests faltering confidence in the region’s economy. After climbing every month since bottoming out in April, the overall index of the Creighton University Mid-America Business Conditions survey fell to 69.0 in November from October’s 70.2. Any score above 50 on the survey’s indexes suggests growth, while a score below 50 suggests recession. Meanwhile, the survey’s confidence index looking ahead six months plummeted 20 points to 50.0 this month from October’s 70.4. The monthly survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
Iowa officials have certified a Republican candidate as a six-vote winner for an open seat in the U.S. House, in what is shaping up to be the closest congressional election in decades. Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks finished ahead of Democrat Rita Hart in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District after a recount saw her 47-vote lead steadily dwindle to single digits. The state Board of Canvass voted Monday afternoon to certify Miller-Meeks as the winner over Hart by a final count of 196,964 to 196,958. The board also certified President Donald Trump as the winner of the state’s six electoral votes.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the longest-serving Republican senator and third in the line of presidential succession, is back in the Senate on Monday after testing positive for coronavirus two weeks ago. Grassley, 87, isolated after finding out he had been exposed to the virus and tested positive shortly after that. He said in a statement that he never had any symptoms and had been cleared to return to the office by his doctors. He says the disease affects people differently. He added, “More than a thousand Americans are dying every day and many more are hospitalized. That means we all have to do our part to help protect our friends, family and fellow Americans.”
