Hawkeye Reporter

Before Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds reopened restaurants and churches in the state, researchers at the University of Iowa said it would only make the COVID-19 pandemic worse, warning that it would spread and cause hundreds of additional deaths. 

The researcher released documents recently showing what epidemiologists and disease experts have said on the virus, according to WHO. If businesses remain open, the researchers said there will be widespread deaths through May.

“Evidence shows that COVID-19 will continue to spread in Iowa, likely at an increasing rate,” the documents state, according to WHO.

Researchers said the virus is likely to spread in the community through groups, according to WHO. Reopening businesses where people will gather in groups larger than 10 could hurt all the work the state has done to mitigate the coronavirus.

"The State of Iowa is sufficiently interconnected that we expect continued growth of COVID-19, even in the absence of any measures to relax social distancing or to reopen previously closed businesses and religious institutions,” the researchers wrote. “Importantly, even though much of the recent spread in Iowa has been attributed to clusters (e.g., workplaces, long-term care facilities), continued increase in community spread is expected.”