Cedar Rapids, Linn County | featured news

Another 28,194 individuals were fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as of 11 a.m. Saturday, bringing Iowa’s total to more than 12.4 percent of the population.

IOWA CITY — As many across Iowa are struggling to get a COVID-19 vaccine appointment — and with the state abandoning plans for a centralized scheduling tool — an Iowa City application developer has designed a program that has helped dozens.

Just as 2020 has changed all of us in one way or another, we need to acknowledge that it likely has changed customers as well. It would be unwise to simply push forward with old tactics, not considering the changes that this year has brought to all of us.

Back in the early 2000s, in an unassuming lab at the heart of the University of Iowa Health Care campus, researchers Stanley Perlman and Paul McCray embarked on the low-profile work of making a genetically-modified mouse capable of contracting SARS — a severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by a coronavirus spreading at the time.

Farmland value in Iowa rose by 7.8 percent between September 2020 and March 2021, according to a new survey from the Realtors Land Institute’s Iowa chapter.The survey asked farmland experts their opinions on the “current status of the Iowa farmland market.”

WATERLOO — The Iowa governor and lieutenant governor toured one of Waterloo’s newest child care centers, looking for ways to help expand child care access across the state in the wake of a new task force studying the issue.Gov. Kim Reynolds and Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg stopped at It Takes a Village in Waterloo, which offers 24-hour child care for up to 105 children.

Like her Republican counterparts, U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson didn’t vote for the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill that was signed into law Thursday, but she said Friday she likes parts of it.“The public health measure part — that’s absolutely what we need right now,” the 1st District representative said on her weekly call with reporters.

As virus cases plummeted, Iowa quietly extended a $3.9 million contact tracing contract with a company owned by a major Republican Party donor and supporter of Gov. Kim Reynolds, according to documents released Friday.

DES MOINES — Steve Ovel of Cedar Rapids, a fixture at the Iowa Legislature for many years as a lobbyist for Kirkwood Community College, has been honored by the House for his work on education and workforce issues.

The Cedar Rapids Police Department is teaming up with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to remind those planning to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day to do so responsibly.