The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom based in Washington, D.C., released a report about a July 14 document prepared for White House Coronavirus Task Force. According to the document, 18 states – including Iowa – are considered red zone states. That means those states have had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population in the last week. Iowa had 116 cases per 100,000 population, compared to the national average of 119 per 100,000.

The report supplied areas of the state which are in red or yellow zones. Yellow zones had between 10 to 100 new cases of COVID-19 in the last week and a test positivity rate of between 5 to 10 percent. Marshalltown is listed as a yellow zone area, along with Des Moines, Ames, Iowa City and more.

To preempt exponential community spread, the document recommends for the public:

• Wear a mask at all times outside the home and maintain physical distance

• Social gatherings should be limited to 25 people or fewer

• Do not go to bars or nightclubs

• Use take out, outdoor dining or indoor dining when strict social distancing can be maintained

• Protect anyone with serious medical conditions at home by social distancing at home and using high levels of personal hygiene

• Reduce public interactions and activities to 50 percent.

For public officials, the document recommends:

• Limit gyms to 25 percent occupancy and close bars until percent positive rates are less than 3 percent; create outdoor dining opportunities with

pedestrian areas

• Limit social gatherings to 25 people or fewer

• Institute routine weekly testing of all workers in assisted living and long-term care facilities. Require masks for all staff and prohibit

visitors

• Ensure all business retailers and personal services require masks and can safely social distance

• Increase messaging on the risk of serious disease for individuals in all age groups with preexisting obesity, hypertension and Type 1 diabetes, and recommend to shelter in place

• Work with local community groups to provide targeted, tailored messaging to communities with high case rates, and increase community level testing

• Recruit more contact tracers as community outreach workers to ensure all cases are contacted and all positive households are

individually tested within 24 hours

• Provide isolation facilities outside of households if COVID-positive individuals cannot quarantine successfully.

For testing, the following is recommended:

• Move to community-led neighborhood testing and work with community groups to increase access to testing

• Surge testing and contact tracing resources to neighborhoods and zip codes with highest case rates

• For diagnostic pooling, laboratories should use pooling of samples to increase testing access and reduce turnaround times to less than 12

hours. Consider pools of 3-5 individuals

• For surveillance pooling involving family and cohabitating households, screen entire households in a single test by pooling specimens of all

members into single collection device.

The number of daily positive COVID-19 cases in Marshall County continues to rise. On Thursday, the Iowa Department of Public Health confirmed 18 additional cases. On Wednesday, 11 cases were confirmed.

Marshall County is in the top eight counties in Iowa with the highest COVID-19 cases. The others are Polk with 8,076; Woodbury, 3,418; Black Hawk, 2,644; Buena Vista, 1,748; Johnson, 1,596; Dallas, 1,492; Linn, 1,513; Dallas, 1,492; and Scott, 1,243. The case numbers on the IDPH website are updated throughout the day.

A long-term care facility, Grandview Heights of Marshalltown, has an outbreak of 33 cases with three recovered.

Across the state, there have been 37,669 positive cases. Of the total, 27,568 have recovered.

There are 210 Iowans hospitalized with the virus. Of Friday’s total, 70 are in intensive care units and 32 are on ventilators.

Hospital activity is displayed by regions on the IDPH website, coronavirus.iowa.gov. Marshall County is in Regional Medical Coordination Center Region 1, which has 68 hospitalized patients. Of the total hospitalized in Region 1, 17 are in intensive care units and eight are on ventilators. Eleven patients were admitted in the last 24 hours.

There have been 20 COVID-19 deaths in Marshall County and 782 statewide.

Across the state, 403,013 tests have been conducted. Plus, 906,811 Test Iowa assessments have been conducted – 3,154 in Marshall County.