SPM News

The Sioux City Musketeers take to the ice in Sioux City on Saturday night for the first time since the start of the pandemic. New CEO Travis Morgan talked to Siouxland Public Media’s Sheila Brummer about safety during this era of COVID-19.

304 News Iowa Department of Public Health Spokesperson Amy McCoy resigned today. McCoy was a legislative liaison for the department who started handling COVID-19 related media requests at the start of the pandemic. She became the main spokesperson in July when longtime communications director Polly Carver-Kimm was let go. Carver-Kimm has sued the state for her termination. Carver-Kim says she was forced out for fulfilling journalists’ public information requests. The litigation is pending. The

110620 Noon Large numbers of coronavirus cases have been trending for the last week in Iowa. In Woodbury County, since yesterday, there have been 121 new cases and no further deaths. There have been 8154 cases in Woodbury County and 102 deaths since the pandemic began. The county has a 14-day positivity rate of 20.9 percent. Iowa public health officials reported 3,533 new confirmed cases Friday and 14 more deaths. The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals reached a new high of 912. Yesterday

Today, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds announced plans for a new public service campaign as cases continue to climb. She says Iowans need to made an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 during the next three weeks. Reynolds also says the success of Republican candidates in the general election was proof that most Iowans support her decision to not require masks and quickly end most restrictions on businesses. Reynolds says the media campaign would begin next week and would include newspaper,

The general election was November 3. This week on The Exchange, we discuss the election results. Siouxland Public Media's Mary Hartnett and Sheila Brummer are the program's hosts. Democratic Sioux City State House Representative Chris Hall and Woodbury County Republican Party Chairwoman Suzan Stewart discuss and analyze the results.

Iowa saw the most new cases of COVID-19 in a 24-hour period since the start of the pandemic, with more than 2,800 new infections and 26 deaths. That includes a man in Woodbury County between the ages of 61-and-80 for 101 deaths in all and 95 news cases. Woodbury County’s 14-day test positivity rate is the highest since the state started releasing that data at 20%. Across the state, doctors and hospital administrators have recently sounded alarms that increasing virus infections in the state will

10320 304 It is election day, and Iowa voters are expected to cast ballots in record numbers. Nearly a million people have cast absentee ballots. Concerns about the coronavirus contributed to the surge in early voting. 64% of active Democratic voters and 42% of Republicans requested absentee ballots.

110320 Noon News It is finally Election Day, and the polls are open across the country. Iowans have already cast roughly a million early ballots. Polls opened at about 1,200 polling places at 7 a.m. today, and voting will continue until 9 p.m. The Secretary of State's Office reports just over 2 million Iowa residents are registered to vote, and about half of them already cast an absentee ballot.

Democrat Joe Biden is making his case against President Donald Trump on the coronavirus in Iowa, one of the states hit hardest by the pandemic. Speaking Friday at a drive-in rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, Biden rattled off a litany of statistics about how the pandemic has hit the state, noting Iowa has hit a daily record number of cases and hospitalizations this week and highlighting the steep job losses there since the pandemic hit. He mentioned that the Iowa State Fair was canceled this

Today we have an update from the Reblitz family in Moville. Their two school-age children attend Woodbury Central Schools. Their father Donny Reblitz is on the school Board. Their mother Stacey teaches at the elementary school. Today we learn that their son Jackson tested positive for COVID-19 and had some serious symptoms. For several weeks into the school year, the family had not been affected by the coronavirus, but recently, their son Jackson became ill and tested positive for the virus.