BREAKING NEWS: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds says the state is over the hump in terms of covid, and she’s taking down the covid websites and letting the Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation for the state expire. Reynolds announced Thursday that she has signed the final extension of Iowa’s Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation, letting it expire at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 15. Reynolds first issued the public health emergency proclamation on March 17, 2020, as covid first began to bloom and spread throughout the U.S.  Iowa’s covid numbers continue to remain problematic,... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Iowa covid-19 cases are skyrocketing, hitting their highest numbers in over a year, prompting some to call for a return to restrictions including a statewide mask mandate. According to the website coronavirus.iowa.gov, there were 9,362 new COVID-19 cases over the past week, an average of 1,337 new cases per day, bringing the state’s total number of cases to 528,221. Over the last 24 hours, there were 125 patients hospitalized in Iowa, for a statewide total of 721 (up from 623 last week), and 172 are in the ICU (up from 146 last week), and 67 are on ventilators (up from 57 last... Read More

BREAKING: Iowa covid-19 numbers are heating up as the weather cools down, pushing Iowa into the red zone of “high” contagion and causing some to call for a statewide shutdown and new mask mandates. The 14-day positivity rate of COVID-19 for the state climbed from 8.9% to 9.2% in the last week, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. Iowa has had 8,047 new positive cases in just the last week. Of those hospitalized with COVID-19, 75.8% are unvaccinated, while 87.1% of those listed in intensive care with COVID-19 are unvaccinated. Numbers from the Iowa Department of Public... Read More

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed a law protecting workers from having to comply with covid mandates at the office if they have religious or other exemptions to them. On Friday night, Reynolds signed the bill that would allow employees to escape employer covid mandates, including vaccination mandates, and allow greater use of medical and religious exemptions for people to refuse covid restrictions. The Iowa House and Senate had passed the bill Thursday. It makes it tougher for businesses to Kim Reynolds require employees to be vaccinated or submit to other covid protocols such as regular testing.... Read More

BREAKING NEWS (UPDATED): Iowa has been slammed with a civil rights investigation by the Biden administration’s Education Department over Gov. Kim Reynolds’ move to ban mask mandates. The federal government investigation levels the charge that Iowa, and Gov. Reynolds’ actions, “create an unsafe learning environment for students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from covid-19.” Iowa is one of five states to get hit with the investigations, the other four being Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. “We’re advocating for... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: As the covid-19 delta variant rips through Iowa, a fierce battle is raging between Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Supreme Court over mask mandates and further mitigations. On Friday, the chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, Susan Christensen, whom Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed in 2018, signed an order making masks mandatory in public areas controlled by the court ruling — regardless of vaccination status —  clashing with Reynolds’ state law banning mask mandates in public schools and other public areas. Christensen based her order on recommendations... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Covid-19 numbers are dropping in Rock Island County, according to data released by the Rock Island County health department. As previously reported earlier on QuadCities.com, numbers across Illinois have been dropping as the number of vaccinated people above age 16 in the state has gone over 50 percent. Today, the Rock Island County health department reported 16 new cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the total to 14,487. Currently, 26 patients are hospitalized in the county with the virus. The average age of today’s cases is 32. The new cases are: • 2 women in her 40s •... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Covid numbers for Illinois Region 2, which includes the Illinois Quad-Cities, continue to worsen, bringing our area ominously close to potential mitigations, according to data released over the weekend. As earlier reported on QuadCities.com, covid-19 numbers in Illinois Region 2, which includes the Quad-Cities area, have been surging over the past two weeks, putting the area at risk for mitigations and a shutdown of some activities. Region 2 has seen a rise in covid cases for more than seven days, which would put it in danger of having some mitigations reinstated; it has seen three... Read More

There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t blame the messenger when you receive bad news. However, that saying is reliant on the messenger being a neutral party. When the messenger is merely the one bringing you the message, it’s without blame. For example, when we at QuadCities.com, give you a story featuring covid statistics, we’re passing along information we’ve gleaned from an official source. We also attribute that source, so that you know where we got that information. We have no part in creating that information. We do not make up the statistics. We do the duty of what the media... Read More

When you allow people with less intelligence and common sense to think for you and inform your decisions, the results are seldom good. And that’s why Iowans — and those traveling through Iowa in the Quad-Cities and throughout the state — need to ignore the abysmal advice of short-sighted Governor Kim Reynolds and trust scientists and their own common sense and good judgement in regard to covid. Over 5,000 people have died in Iowa since the pandemic began, 60 percent of those in the last three months, according to the Iowa Department of Health. Sixty percent. Over the last three... Read More