In today’s press conference (April 21, 2020), Governor Kim Reynolds announced that she is launching Test Iowa, a public-private partnership to test 540,000 Iowans for COVID-19 in addition to the current testing measures. The goal is to be able to test up to 3,000 people a day at various testing centers throughout Iowa. In phase two, serology testing will be conducted to detect healthy individuals with COVID-19 antibodies. The governor states that she wants to safely get the state back to work, and Test Iowa will provide real-time data to observe hotspots as well as locations with little exposure to the coronavirus.
Gov. Reynolds requested that all Iowans visit testiowa.com and take the health assessment. The test will ask for your symptoms, your amount of exposure to those with the virus, as well as if you have traveled to a recent COVID hotspot. If eligible, you will then receive an email prompting you to self-schedule a testing appointment at a testing center closest to you. The state will eventually have drive-through testing locations that will work in accordance with the assessment data to determine locations. The first testing center will be open on Saturday in the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, although a testing center at a long-term care facility will open tomorrow in Tama as well. Priority testing will be given to first-responders and healthcare workers, and will progress to highly symptomatic people and finally to asymptomatic people with the serology testing. In addition, daily check-in assessments will be sent to individuals, with a much shorter version of the initial assessment to track how and where the virus is progressing.
Iowa is the second state in the nation to implement this kind of testing, with Utah being the first. While most states are struggling to gather 800-1200 tests a day, within a few weeks Iowa’s goal is to test at full capacity of 3,000 tests per day. Through this vigilant effort, data and health professionals can track this changing virus in real time, and provide Iowans with contact tracing and the confidence to return to work when it is safe. All data is owned by Iowa and secured by Qualtrics, and is protected by HIPAA compliances. Your private information will be protected and the data will only be seen as a QR code to analyzers.
Please visit testiowa.com to take the health assessment and get Iowa back on track.