Credit: Photo of the US Navy by 1st class mass communication specialist Kyle Steckler, via Flickr
The Minnesota Department of Health’s coronavirus update on Saturday includes 54 more deaths and more than 2,500 new cases of COVID-19.
As there is no data reported on New Year’s Day, the data released on Saturday is from Thursday, New Year’s Eve. Friday and Saturday numbers will be released in the Sunday update.
There have already been 5,377 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,464) came from long-term care, including 33 of the 54 reported on Saturday.
Minnesota has not yet confirmed the new variant of the coronavirus that is circulating in Europe and other parts of the world.
The state is now providing updates to how many people have received Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines. As of 2 January, the state said 57,017 people had been vaccinated in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are health professionals who have received the Pfizer vaccine.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalization numbers are not updated on weekends. As of December 30, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 895.
Of those hospitalized, 196 were in intensive care and 699 were being treated outside the ICU.
Test rates and positivity
The 2,530 positive results in Saturday’s update were a total of 41,646 tests completed, creating a daily test positivity rate of 6.07%. This marks an increase in cases and in the positivity rate compared to last week’s figures.
However, it is difficult to assess whether this means that the drop in cases seen in December is ending, as there may be anomalies in reports due to the holiday weekend.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage rate of positivity (total positives divided by total tests completed) of less than 5% for at least two weeks is necessary to reopen the economy safely. This limit of 5% is based on the total of positives divided by the total of tests.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the Minnesota test positivity rate for the past seven days is 5.2%, with Minnesota no longer one of the states with a 7-day positive rate below 5%, having achieved that mark for a few days last week.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total tests: 5,616,567 (over 5,574,962)
- People tested: 2,982,853 (over 2,972,804)
- Positive cases: 417,832 (over 415,302)
- Deaths: 5,377 – 176 of which are “probable *” (over 5,323)
- Active cases: 19,633 (over 18,222)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 398,199 (out of 397,080)
- Total people vaccinated: 57,017 (over 44,638)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after a positive test using the COVID-19 antigen test, which is considered less accurate than the most common PCR test.