On February 16, Iowa’s two COVID-19 dashboards—one dedicated to vaccination data, and one for other major metrics—will be decommissioned. The end of these dashboards follows the end of Iowa’s public health emergency declaration, on February 15.
In a statement announcing the end of the public health emergency, Iowa Governor Kim Reynold assures residents that “the state health department will continue to review and analyze COVID-19 and other public health data daily.” Data reporting on COVID-19 will be more closely aligned to reporting on the flu and other respiratory diseases, she said. Even though COVID-19 is causing the death of more than 100 Iowa residents a week, according to CDC data.
Iowa used to be the state with the most frequent COVID-19 data reporting, with a dashboard that updated multiple times an hour. In fact, I wrote an ode to its frequent updates here at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch, back in fall 2020. But now, Iowa joins Florida, Nebraska, and other states in ending its public health emergency and, consequently, severely downgrading the level of information that it’s providing to residents who are very much still living in a public health emergency.
At least the state will continue providing regular updates to the CDC—those requirements haven’t changed.
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