After facing a workforce shortage for months, Iowa has awarded an emergency $2.3 million contact-tracing contract to a company owned by a Republican Party insider. The Iowa Department of Public Health selected Iowa City-based MCI for the contract out of 14 companies that applied, saying it submitted the best proposal and that political considerations did not play a role. The company is expected to supply 200 contact tracers to supplement the hundreds of public health workers who have failed to keep up with Iowa’s fast-growing virus caseload. The first 60 graduated training and were beginning state work Friday. MCI is owned by GOP donor Anthony Marlowe, and has done work for President Donald Trump and Gov. Kim Reynolds’ political campaigns.
Deaths from the coronavirus in Iowa have reached their highest level since the beginning of the pandemic. The Iowa Department of Public Health said Friday that 84 more residents were reported dead from the virus, a one-day high for the second straight day after recording 70 deaths Thursday. Before Friday, the state of 3.1 million people has been averaging between 25 and 30 daily virus-related deaths for weeks. Their total since the beginning of the pandemic surged past 2,600 on Friday. The rapid rise in deaths comes after the state’s caseload peaked in mid-November, overwhelming hospitals.
A 56-year-old Iowa man has admitted that he threatened the life of U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York. Kenneth Dean Brown, of Waterloo, pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to transmitting a threatening communication. He admitted that in December 2019, he called Nadler’s office in Washington D.C. and threatened to find someone to assassinate Nadler. Brown remains in custody of the U.S. Marshal Service until his sentencing, which has not been scheduled. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The FBI is pleading with the public for any information on a missing Iowa girl on what is her 11th birthday. The FBI field office in Omaha, Nebraska, posted a plea on its Twitter page Friday asking for any information of Breasia Terrell, who has been missing since July 9. Authorities say she was last seen at a Davenport apartment complex with her half-brother and his 47-year-old father. Police have not made any arrests in the girl’s disappearance but have labeled the father of Breasia’s half-brother a person of interest. The man was convicted of a sex crime in 1990 when he was 17.
