Iowa surpassed its northern neighbor of Minnesota today in the total number of positive coronavirus cases reported. Gov. Kim Reynolds announced at her press conference this morning that there are 125 new cases in Iowa, the state’s single highest one-day jump, bringing the statewide total up to 1,270. After Minnesota’s daily update this morning, their state stood at 1,242. For much of the last week, Iowa’s daily numbers have signficantly outpaced Minnesota’s.

It’s the first time Iowa’s cases have topped a neighboring state with a larger population by raw number of cases. Iowa has 3.1 million residents. Minnesota has 5.6 million people. Wisconsin, with a population of 5.8 million, has 2,756 cases. Illinois, which has 12.7 million residents, currently has 15,078 cases. Missouri, with a 6.1 million population, has 3,327 cases. Nebraska, population 1.9 million, has 567 cases. South Dakota Dakota, with 882,000 people, has 447 cases.

According to an international COVID-19 tracker, this is how many positive cases Iowa and its surrounding states have per one million people:

Case per 1 mil Iowa 405 Minnesota 225 Nebraska 275 Wisconsin 477 South Dakota 517 Missouri 563 Illinois 1,175

It’s noteworthy that Minnesota actually has the lowest positive case ratio per population of any state in the nation. Meanwhile, while Iowa isn’t nearly as bad off as Illinois, its population ratio is close to Wisconsin’s and ever-rising.

What’s also interesting is that Minnesota’s raw numbers are now lower than Iowa’s despite their state doing significantly more testing. Minnesota reports conducting 32,294 overall tests, both through their state and private labs. Iowa appears to have conducted 14,973 tests as of today. One might expect that a higher testing capacity would reveal more positive cases, meaning Iowa could have even more widespread infection than a place like Minnesota and the state simply doesn’t know it.

Iowa has at least steadily increased its test capacity. Today, the Governor said the state lab can currently has the ability to process 2,530 tests.

by Pat Rynard

Posted 4/9/20