Thousands of COVID-19 tests would have to be conducted before Iowa meets the goal set by the president’s coronavirus task force of testing all nursing home residents and staff in the next two weeks.
Governor Reynolds said yesterday that 26,000 of the coronavirus tests conducted in the state since March were connected to long term care facilities.
“Since May 1st, more than 9,000 tests have been sent to 94 facilities to test staff and residents,” Reynolds said. “Strike teams have been deployed to five counties to test more than 1300 long term employees across 40 facilities.”
According to the governor, there’s been some testing of residents and staff in 95 percent of Iowa’s 444 nursing homes this spring. The most recent federal data shows more than 23,000 Iowans are residents of a certified nursing facility. According to Iowa Workforce Development 55,000 Iowans work in nursing and residential care facilities. If all are tested this month, that would be a total of 78,000 tests.
After nearly 10 weeks of testing, the state just hit a total of 89,000 tests processed.
State officials have confirmed COVID-19 outbreaks at nearly eight percent of the state’s nursing homes and 57 percent of the Iowans who have died of the virus were residents of a long term care facility.