EDITOR’S NOTE: The weekly COVID-19 Marshall County case report will continue to be available in the Times-Republican every Friday. The daily COVID-19 reports are available on the website, timesrepublican.com.

New COVID-19 cases have slowed with only a double digit increase in Marshalltown this week.  

This week saw an increase of 5 percent in reported positive cases with 842 cases reported May 21 to 884 reported cases this week. Overall there were 42 new cases of Marshall County COVID-19 cases reported.

According to the Iowa Department of Health data, in Iowa 57 percent of the reported cases of COVID-19 have been from white people, 10 percent have been Asian, 12 percent have been African American and 26 percent have been Latino. 

More men than women have reportedly been infected with 51 percent of the cases being male and 47 percent being female. 

People between the ages of 18 and 40 made up the majority of confirmed cases with 42 percent; people between the ages of 42 and 60, 36 percent; people between the ages 61 and 80, 14 percent; people older than 81, 5 percent; and 3 percent have been younger than 18. 

Businesses and local governments are asking residents to continue to wear masks in public and practice social distancing. Oftentimes people without symptoms can still pass on COVID-19. 

People can be asymptomatic, which means they show no symptoms of a virus, but they are still carrying it. 

Overall Iowa’s cases have steadily increased as the state starts to open up businesses. Iowa’s cases have increased by 15 percent. Last week ended with 16,144 confirmed cases and this week comes to a close with 18,573 with 2,429 additional cases reported.

There 40 fewer new cases were  this week than last week but a slightly smaller percentage increase than last week. 

Marshall County has the fifth highest number of COVID-19 confirmed cases. In front are Polk with 3,928, Woodbury with 2,671, Black Hawk with 1,723 and Linn with 909.

At least 500 Iowans have died from COVID-19 and seven of those deaths were residents of Marshall County. Which is an increase of 23 percent from last week.