The Food and Drug Administration advisory committee approved the nation’s second COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna.

This follows the beginning of Iowan health care workers receiving Pfizer vaccine, 226,434 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 in Iowa. Since Wednesday there has been an increase of 3,105 cases since Tuesday.

The state saw a spike in cases during mid-November but has since seen a decline. Story county currently has 7,572 positive cases of COVID-19. In Iowa, there has been a total of 3,451 deaths related to COVID-19, 24 of those occurring in Story county increasing by one since Tuesday. 

Like the rest of the country, Iowa continues to see a majority of deaths among those 80 years or older. Of the deaths in Iowa 1,135 of them were from long-term care outbreaks.

The state of Iowa is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations to provide the vaccine for those who are frontline healthcare workers and long term care employees and residents.

The state will soon begin providing information on vaccinations to the Iowa COVID-19 website. In Iowa, a total of 204,856 have recovered from COVID-19, 28,970 of those with pre-existing conditions. Of those recovered, 26 percent of them are 18-26 years olds while only 4 percent of people 80 years old and older get better.