Iowa news
Equipment upgrades completed for health care network
Telehealth applications and remote connections are familiar to Iowans as they visit and communicate with their local hospitals and clinics. For those opportunities to occur, there is network hardware and virtual connections ‘behind-the-scenes’, which make those critical healthcare communications operate seamlessly. Recently, the Iowa Communications Network engineered and implemented site upgrades to 191 locations of either physical hardware or virtual connections to Iowa hospitals and clinics statewide. These locations are connected to the Iowa Rural Health Telecommunications Program, which is the healthcare network managed by the Iowa Hospital Association. (Iowa Communications Network)
Iowa stops tracking home county of COVID-19 hospital patients
Iowa public health officials have stopped requiring hospitals to report the home county of patients being treated for COVID-19, even as all 99 counties have a high rate of spread and hospitalizations are at their highest level since early October. Iowa Department of Public Health spokeswoman Sarah Ekstrand on Tuesday confirmed the change in reporting requirements. (KCRG)
COVID-19 hospitalizations surge in Iowa, setting a new record for 2021
COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the rise in Iowa as the state enters the winter months, with the Iowa Department of Public Health reporting a new 2021 high for hospitalizations in Wednesday’s weekly data update. There are now 721 Iowans hospitalized with COVID-19, up nearly 100 from the previous week and more than the year’s previous peak of 638, set in September. (Des Moines Register)
National news
First U.S. case of omicron variant is found in California
The omicron variant of the coronavirus has been detected in California, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday. The CDC said in a statement that the California and San Francisco Departments of Public Health confirmed the case in a traveler who returned from South Africa on Nov. 22. The person tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday. (NBC News)
What’s driving the pandemic’s health care exodus
1 in 5 American health care workers have left the profession since the pandemic hit. The pandemic has pushed what was already a tough situation into crisis mode. And as psychiatrist Wendy Dean sees it, this is more than just burnout. She says health care workers are suffering a moral injury. (WBUR)
Most mumps cases are among the vaccinated, CDC finds
Mumps cases continue to circulate in the U.S., largely among vaccinated people, including children. Cases of mumps, once a common childhood illness, declined by more than 99 percent in the U.S. after a vaccine against the highly contagious respiratory infection was developed in 1967. Cases dropped to just 231 in 2003, down from more than 152,000 in 1968. But cases began climbing again in 2006, when 6,584 were reported, most of them in vaccinated people. (NBC News)