Quad City health leaders: ‘spread of the virus is rampant in our community’

The spread of COVID-19 in the Quad Cities is “rampant” according to local health leaders.

On Thursday, the Scott and Rock Island County health departments addressed the community and day after day are reminding community members how important it is to mask up and only go out for essentials.

In Scott County, two additional deaths were reported bringing the county’s total to 54 deaths due to the virus. The county has had a total of 7,611 cases of COVID-19. “The Iowa Department of Public Health has reported two additional deaths of Scott County residents," Scott County Health Department’s Director Edward Rivers said. "We are deeply dismayed that we have lost two more members of our community to this virus. We send our sympathy to their families.”

In Rock Island County, they have a record high of 64 patients in the hospital currently with COVID-19. They also announced 121 new cases on Thursday, bringing the county total to 6,105. The total number of deaths in the county is at 111, two additional deaths were announced on Thursday. A man in his 90′s and a man in his 50′s; both were in the hospital. “We send our deepest condolences to the families and friends of these men,” Rock Island County Health Department’s Chief Operating Officer Janet Hill said.

Scott County leaders say at this point in the pandemic, the community controls this “critical point”. “The Quad Cities is at a critical point in the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rivers said. “We have had two goals for our community: to slow the spread of the virus; and to protect our healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed. I am sad to report that we have failed at one and are dangerously close to failing at both.”

Rivers said the spread of COVID-19 in the community is increasing faster each day. “We have gone from an average of 60 daily cases in the middle of October to 250+ daily cases this week,” Rivers said. “Another indication is our positivity rate. In Scott County, we hovered around 7% positivity for a number of weeks. That number jumped to around 16% during the first week of November and is now above 23%. This means in the last 14 days almost 1 in 4 people who were tested were positive. Rock Island County only slightly less with a seven-day rolling average positivity rate of 20%. Spread of the virus is rampant in our community at this point."

“You may have heard the pleas from our hospitals over the last two weeks. You have heard them express their concern that they may not be able to accommodate every patient who requires an ICU bed. Even if more beds were available, trained staff to support patients in the ICU are limited. Hospitals are losing staff to illness and quarantine. We are now being told that we may soon reach a point where the staff and resources needed to support you should you need more advanced medical treatment might not be available.”

Rivers said the community has two options moving forward:

  • Option 1: “Continue on our current course in which some in our community mask and distance and the others live their daily lives as if we weren’t in a pandemic. This hasn’t worked so far, and there’s no reason to believe that will change.”
  • Option 2: “All of us – members of the public, business owners, community leaders, students, and employees – we all get on the same page and agree on one thing: we cannot be a healthy, prosperous community if we do not slow this pandemic down. That means we ALL mask. We ALL cancel gatherings. We ALL only go out for essentials. We ALL immediately isolate if we have symptoms. We ALL stay in quarantine the entire time.”

Rivers said the key to all of this is the community, our residents and our neighbors. “We have been explaining for months why it’s important for people to mask up and distance,” Rivers said. “We’ve provided reasons why it’s important. We’ve highlighted the damage this ongoing pandemic is having on our businesses. We’ve stressed the impact on our health care systems. Yet we still haven’t seen it happen.”


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