DES MOINES – Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Wednesday, signed a new Public Health Disaster proclamation that modifies existing public health measures to provide clarity and simplify the measures applicable to recreational activities and fitness centers.  

Except for high school, collegiate, or professional sporting or recreational gatherings, the proclamation only permits sporting and recreational activities when all participants in the gathering—including athletes, coaches, or instructors—maintain six feet of physical distance at all times.  Activities where closer contact is required or reasonably unavoidable, such as a wrestling meet or basketball game, are prohibited. Spectators are also limited at all gatherings to two per athlete and must be social distanced six feet apart. And all participants, except for athletes, must wear masks. These requirements also apply to group classes or activities at fitness centers and gyms.  

The proclamation does not change any measures in place for high school-sponsored, collegiate, or professional sporting or recreational activities. High school sports and extracurricular activities continue to be permitted, even where close contact may occur. But spectators at games or events are limited to two per student and are required to wear a mask. 

The proclamation was effective immediately and continues to expire on December 10, 2020.  The full proclamation is online its entirety.

(Radio Iowa) – The board that governs the three state universities will keep its tuition freeze in place for the spring semester. Board of Regents president Michael Richards made the announcement during the board’s virtual meeting yesterday (Wednesday). “In June, the board voted to keep tuition and mandatory fees flat for the fall 2020 semester for all students,” Richards said. “…The board will not be increasing tuition or mandatory fees for the rest of the academic year.”

Richards says the year-long pause in tuition hikes is the right thing to do in the midst of a pandemic, but he says the board intends to resume its five-year plan of gradual tuition increases, starting in the fall of 2021. The presidents of Iowa, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa says they are facing financial and demographic headwinds that make tuition increases in the next few years critical. University of Iowa president Bruce Harreld, who is retiring this summer, says he strongly believes raising tuition next fall is the right thing to do.

“Tuition has to go up,” he says, “or the quality is going to go down.” Iowa State University president Wendy Winterstein says her institution is dealing with a 150-million dollar hit from the pandemic. “We made it through…those early months of Covid-19 with our general operating budget relatively intact,” she said, “but we’re facing some extremely challenging financial times right now.”

University of Northern Iowa president Mark Nook says the universities need to prepare for the number of high school graduates to drop dramatically in five to six years — as birth rates dipped during the 2008 recession.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CST

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Some Republican governors are changing course on their coronavirus pandemic response as coronavirus cases skyrocket nationwide in the days after the election. Chief executives in Iowa, Utah and North Dakota are among those who have issued mask mandates and other restrictions in recent days. GOP governors in Ohio and West Virginia have also recently strengthened existing mask mandates, while Mississippi’s governor expanded the state’s partial mandate to cover more counties. Governors who long resisted health officials’ calls for widespread mask wearing now find themselves in the throes of a crisis and forced to follow science or risk making a dangerous situation worse through their inaction.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A 19-year-old Davenport man is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a man last month. Sherral Jermaine Tolbert is charged in the Oct. 25 death of 19-year-old Lavonta Baker in Davenport. Police found Baker dead in a car after he had been shot several times. Tolbert was served with the first-degree murder warrant Monday at the Scott County Jail, where he was being held for allegedly violating his probation on an earlier conviction. He had been sentenced in March to three years of supervised probation for numerous felony convictions.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa set a record for deaths blamed on the coronavirus as new confirmed cases and the number of people being treated in hospitals remained high. The state Department of Public Health reported 40 deaths and 3,896 confirmed new cases in the past 24 hours as of Wednesday morning. That brings the total number of deaths to 2,064 and the total cases to 194,479. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 also continued to increase, with a record 1,527 people being treated. There were 283 people in intensive care units. In the last week, one in every 107 people in Iowa was diagnosed with the coronavirus. That’s the third-highest rate in the nation, behind North Dakota and South Dakota.

IOWA CITY– Officials with the Iowa Dept. of Corrections, Wednesday night, said Robert William Sirovy was pronounced dead, likely due to complications related to COVID-19 and other preexisting medical conditions at approximately 8:02 p.m. on Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He had been transported there recently from the Anamosa State Penitentiary due to his declining health. Sirovy was 64 years old at the time of his death.  Sirovy had been incarcerated for multiple convictions of violation of Iowa Code 901A.2(3), Sexual Predator with Prior Convictions and Enhancements from Mahaska County. His sentence began on October 20, 2006, and his discharge date would have been December 14, 2132.

WOODWARD, Iowa (AP) — Officials have identified a 7-year-old boy who died after being hit by a vehicle in a central Iowa school parking lot. Des Moines station WHO-TV reports the accident happened around 3:45 p.m. Monday in the parking lot of Woodward-Granger High School in Dallas County. Authorities say 7-year-old Charlie Brewer walked into the path of a vehicle and was run over. Medics and Dallas County Sheriff’s deputies responded and found the child dead at the scene. Officials continue to investigate the accident.

(Radio Iowa) – The C-E-O of the state’s largest hospital says if the number of Iowans testing positive for Covid continues to accelerate, he expects to implement the next phase of a “surge” plan — and expand the Iowa City hospital’s ability to accept more patients. “We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the state’s needs.”

Suresh Gunasekaran — the C-E-O of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — briefed members of the State Board of Regents Wednesday. The hospital’s intensive care unit has already been expanded as part of the first phase of dealing with a surge in Covid patients. Ninety-three patients with the coronavirus were in Gunasekaran’s hospital Wednesday — a record — but he says there are still open beds.

“The reason we make these changes in advance, the reason we create this capacity in advance is because we don’t want, when other communities get overwhelmed, for us not to be able to take their patients,” Gunasekaran says. “I’m not going to list all of the different communities, but I will tell you on a daily basis individual rural hospitals hit their maximum and immediately call us and we take the patients.” Gunasekaran says hundreds of hospitalizations from the Iowa City area have been avoided through expansion of the hospital’s testing clinic. The local clinic has the capacity to run a thousand tests a day and often provides results within six-to-eight hours — so Covid-positive patients get assessed earlier and get treatment earlier.

“When you compare our region to other regions, the rate of hospitalizations for their positive-tested patients are so much higher than we and if we didn’t have this resource outside of the hospital, I really do think UIHC would have been overwhelmed long ago,” he says, “with great consequence to the health care system in Iowa.” The hospital was recently featured on N-B-C News after a man from central Missouri was flown all the way to Iowa City for life-saving emergency brain surgery. Gunasekaran says that shows the hospital’s surge plan is working.

“The truth of it today at UIHC, regardless of what’s going on, we continue to create capacity and there are open beds today at UIHC. We are not overwhelmed,” Gunasekaran says, “But if we had not been working on creating this additional capacity, we would be full.” The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — the U-I-H-C — has expanded its intensive care unit to 116 beds and, if conditions worsen, the I-C-U may expand to 200 beds. On Wednesday, hospitals across the state were caring for more than 15-hundred Covid patients and 286 of those patients were in an intensive care unit.

DES MOINES – Governor Kim Reynolds Wednesday, announced an additional allocation of CARES Act funds to support Iowa renters and homeowners at-risk of eviction or foreclosure due to a COVID-19-related loss of income. The Iowa Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention program has now been allocated a total of $37.4 million, with approximately $8 million remaining available. The deadline to apply for rent and mortgage assistance as well as utility assistance through the Iowa Residential Utility Disruption Prevention program is Dec. 4, 2020.

“At no fault of their own, many Iowans are struggling to pay their bills as a result of lost income due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Gov. Reynolds. “Today’s announcement bolsters the Iowa Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention program, which is helping Iowa homeowners and renters make their rent or mortgage payments. Our team will continue to assist Iowans in accessing this critical assistance as the Dec. 4^th deadline approaches.”

“Nearly 11,000 renters and 500 homeowners have received assistance with their rent or mortgage payments and another 2,800 have applied for utility assistance to date,” said IEDA and IFA Executive Director Debi Durham. “Our goal is to assist as many Iowans that have been impacted by COVID-19 and are at-risk of eviction, foreclosure or utility disruption as possible.”

The programs are funded through federal CARES Act funds, which requires that all funds be expended by Dec. 30, 2020.

To be eligible for either program:

• Must have a documented COVID-19-related loss of income on or after March 17, 2020.
• Household income at the time of application may not exceed 80% median family income, which varies by county and household size and is included in the applications.

  Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Program
  The program provides current renters and homeowners who are at-risk of eviction or foreclosure due to a COVID-19 loss of income with rent or mortgage assistance for up to four months. The total maximum in assistance per household is the lesser of $3,200 for rental assistance and $3,600 for mortgage assistance or four months actual rent/mortgage payment amounts. Payments are made directly to landlords and mortgage servicers and applied to the applicant’s account.

  The state has allocated $37.4 million of federal CARES Act funds to the Iowa Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention program to date.

  Residential Utility Disruption Prevention Program
  The program provides eligible households with up to $2,000 towards electric, natural gas and water bills if they are at risk of disconnection due to an inability to pay due to a COVID-19 related loss of income. Payments are made directly to utility providers and applied to the applicant’s account.

  The state allocated approximately $14.5 million of federal CARES Act funds for utility assistance programs.

  For a full list of eligibility requirements and to apply for either program, visit iowahousingrecovery.com through Dec. 4, 2020.