As of Tuesday, 57,270 Iowans have tested positive for COVID-19 but that figure doesn’t include positive results from antigen tests. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health’s coronavirus dashboard there have been 530,461 negative tests, 1,049 deaths, and 44,357 people have recovered.

At Tuesday’s Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting Public Health Administrator Danielle Pettit-Majewski explained that she’s working to get a more accurate picture of the spread of the virus, “I’m trying to figure out the accurate number of positives that we have in the county. The website says 316, that doesn’t include all of the antigen tests, those are included in the total number of tests that are done, we don’t see the positives reflected at the state. My understanding is that that’s going to start showing up at the end of this week, so we’ll have a more accurate reflection of our disease burden in the county which will also help us determine what our percent positivity rate is for return to learn.” She says that many of the COVID-19 tests used locally are antigen tests.

On Tuesday, Washington County’s 14-day positivity rate was 3.0%. Johnson County was at 11.5%, but Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator Marissa Reisen said they have had two days in a row of high positivity rates in Johnson County so that figure will likely continue to go up. School districts that spread out geographically into multiple counties are to look at the county with the highest positivity rate, explained Pettit-Majewski. So Mid-Prairie and Highland school districts will both look at Washington County rates, as well as Johnson County rates.