From the Associated Press (11:20 a.m.):
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa public health officials have stopped requiring hospitals to report the home county of patients being treated for the coronavirus. That comes even as all of the state’s 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 hospital reporting requirements. The change in policy was first reported by the Iowa Capital Dispatch. Ekstrand says the home county of patients is no longer needed to track virus activity because existing data on county-specific trends provides an appropriate understanding of disease trends. Iowa has 623 COVID-19 patients in the hospital and 146 in intensive care.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A teenage boy charged with first-degree murder in the October slashing deaths of his parents in Cedar Rapids had pleaded not guilty. The Gazette reports that 17-year-old Ethan Alexander Orton entered the pleas in court documents filed Monday. Orton was charged after police called to his home around 2 a.m. Oct. 14 found him outside the home covered in blood. Police say he told officers he had killed his mother and father, and the officers found the bodies of 42-year-old Casey Orton and 41-year-old Misty Scott Slade inside. The teen reportedly told officers he killed his parents to “take charge of his life.”
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A driver accused of being drunk when he crashed into and seriously injured a West Des Moines police officer last year has been sentenced to five years in prison. Jon Schwartz, of Kellogg, was sentenced last week after being found guilty by a judge of causing serious injury by vehicle in November 2020. Investigators said the 62-year-old Schwartz was drunk, speeding and watching a movie when he plowed into Officer Jon Kaufman, who was standing next to a vehicle he had stopped along Interstate 35. Kaufman is suing Schwartz and the licensed operator of an Osceola casino where Schwartz had been drinking before the crash. Trial in the lawsuit has been set for 2023.
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa (AP) — Two men already jailed in connection with a botched 2019 robbery that led to a man’s death in Cedar Falls are now charged with first-degree murder. Authorities said Monday that charges were upgraded for 20-year-old Keyon Christian Roby and 22-year-old James Wright-Buls in the death of 24-year-old Grant Saul. The two men were already being detained on conspiracy and robbery charges in connection with the killing. Saul was shot to death at a downtown apartment on Dec. 4, 2019.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is seeking a role in a pair of legal battles over abortion access as the U.S. Supreme Court reaches a potentially defining moment on the issue. The Republican governor promised that if South Dakota loses an appeal in a legal fight over a state law that would require women seeking abortions to consult first with crisis pregnancy centers, which generally advise women not to get abortions, she would try to get the Supreme Court to consider the case. She has already signed onto a legal argument that seeks to undermine the Supreme Court’s previous ruling that access to abortions allows women equal economic and social rights.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked President Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing a coronavirus vaccine mandate on health care workers in 10 states that had brought the first legal challenge against the requirement. The preliminary injunction issued Monday applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Those states all have either a Republican attorney general or governor. A federal judge in Missouri said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid had no clear authority from Congress to enact the vaccine mandate for health care providers that participate in the two government programs. The rule requires workers to receive their first dose by Dec. 6 and their second by Jan. 4.
