Governor Kim Reynolds today announced she will allocate 11.5 million dollars of federal COVID-relief funds for mental health services in Iowa schools and to support community college job training programs. Reynolds said expanding support services in PreK-12 school will help address the coronavirus pandemic's impact on student's mental health.
She says increasing tuition assistance for job training will allow more Iowans to quickly fill high-demand jobs in industries such as health care, information technology, and trucking.
The South Dakota Department of Health reported 234 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday and one new death. The latest death was in a man in the 20-29 age group. It was the eighth death in that age group, and the 1,949th reported fatality of a person in South Dakota with COVID-19.
Eighty-nine new infections were reported among Minnehaha County residents.
Iowa environmental officials are investigating two separate manure spills into state creeks that led to fish kills in both tributaries. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources says in a news release that both spills occurred Wednesday. The first saw hundreds of thousands of gallons of livestock manure spilled into Mud Creek in Lyons County in the northwestern corner of Iowa. The second saw about 10,000 gallons of manure spilled into Kossuth County's Lotts Creek in north-central Iowa. Investigators reported finding a large number of dead fish at both sites.
