Gov. Kim Reynolds on Thursday ordered people in northeastern Iowa to limit their activity, including keeping visits to only immediate family members, in reaction to a spike in COVID-19 activity there.

"You may gather only with members of your immediate household. Limited exceptions will be made for weddings, funerals and other religious gatherings, which will continue to be restricted to 10 people or less," Reynolds said to people in the region. The region affected by the order includes Allamakee, Benton, Black Hawk, Bremer, Buchanan, Clayton, Delaware, Dubuque, Fayette, Grundy, Howard, Jones, Linn and Winneshiek counties.

The regional restriction is the closest Reynolds has come to a shelter-in-place order, as has been in adopted by all but a handful of states, although she did not use the phrase "shelter in place" in her news conference Thursday. The Republican governor has resisted calls for such an order and said the restrictions she has ordered statewide largely accomplish the same thing.

"COVID-19 is now part of our life, but it will not always dictate how we live," Reynolds said. "We will continue to monitor the data and adjust our mitigation strategies as necessary, as we're doing today in (northeast Iowa), but I believe that before long, we will see more signs of progress, and we will begin to get life back to normal."

An additional long-term care facility outbreak of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, pushed the region into a 10 on a 12-point scale Reynolds and the Iowa Department of Public Health are using to weigh mitigation efforts.

The region is home to the Heritage Specialty Care nursing home, where 107 people have tested positive and more than a dozen have died, and the Linn Manor Care Center, where 15 people have tested positive, according to state data released Thursday.

As of Thursday, 175 people in the region were hospitalized with COVID-19, 24 of whom were admitted in the most recent 24-hour period, the state data said.

MORE:The latest on coronavirus in Iowa

In the counties with the new restrictions, violating the orders can lead to a simple misdemeanor, which could carry a fine of up to $625 and up to 30 days in jail.

Order also seeks more working from home

The new orders require all employers to evaluate if more workers can work from home and "to the extent reasonable, shall take steps to enable such employees to work from home."

But it does not require business closures beyond the state's existing restrictions.

"A large percentage of Iowa is an essential workforce. It's almost 80%," Reynolds said.

She encouraged businesses to follow IDPH guidance on mitigating the spread of the disease, such as with staggered shifts.

Reynolds also said, as she has before, that people in the northeast region and throughout the state "should take personal responsibility for their health and the health of others" by staying home except for essential errands, working from home if they're able, practicing good hygiene and practicing social distancing when out in public.

Heather Meador, a supervisor with Linn County Public Health, said at a Thursday afternoon news conference it was clear Reynolds' order was not the same as a shelter-in-place order as practiced in other states. The two states the northeast region borders, Wisconsin and Minnesota, are both under their versions of those orders.

"It's just putting a little bit more enforcement on that piece of, 'Don't be with your neighbors, don't be with other people in the community, stay at home, stay with your family,'" she said.

Dr. Eli Perencevich, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa, supported the move, but said it should have been taken earlier and should be statewide.

"Aggressive social distancing that helps bring the outbreak under control more quickly is actually better for the economy," Perencevich said. "I think the delays are actually hurting our economy. It's not very business-friendly to have kind of half-policies for many months versus really aggressive policies for short periods."

Controlling the virus' spread in the community is key for controlling the outbreak, he said. As a next step, he argued Iowans should all be wearing see-through plastic face shields as being the best, most convenient way of blocking coronavirus from spreading while being user-friendly for laypeople.

"If people wore these, it'd probably be as good as a vaccine," Perencevich said.

More testing coming, including for COVID-19 antibodies

Reynolds also announced a new program, dubbed "Test Iowa," that she said would increase daily testing capacity to 3,000 more COVID-19 tests per day.

"It is an initiative that will enable us to conduct large-scale testing and contact tracing across the state," she said. "We're working on the operational plan now to deploy testing, and I look forward to sharing more details about Test Iowa next week."

Contact tracing involves identifying people who may have come into contact with an infected person and monitoring them for possible infection.

The state is also preparing antibody, or serology, testing for people who have recovered from COVID-19. Such tests could confirm a degree of immunity. Reynolds said there are two Iowa labs ready to perform those tests once they receive the testing materials.

The governor said the state would also use dedicated "strike teams" to be deployed to long-term care facilities and large businesses that are either current outbreak sites or anticipated to be.

More: Worries grow about health of employees in Iowa's meatpacking plants, impact on food supply

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