NIAID-RML
The Minnesota Department of Health’s Sunday COVID-19 update includes data for New Year’s Day and January. 2, and the combined total for both days includes 53 deaths and more than 2,700 new laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
There have already been 5,430 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,499) came from long-term care, including 35 of the 53 reported on Sunday.
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 December 27, the state said 57,017 people had been vaccinated in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are health care workers who 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 2,714 positive results in Sunday’s update were a total of 96,425 tests completed, creating a daily test positivity rate of 2.81%. The positives and exams are Friday and Saturday, so the highest numbers.
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 5.62%, 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: 5,713,240 (over 5,616,567)
- People tested: 3,017,309 (over 2,982,853)
- Positive cases: 420,544 (over 417,832)
- Deaths: 5,430 – 182 of which are “probable *” (over 5,377)
- Active cases: 11,695 (positives subtracted by out-of-isolation patients and deaths)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 403,419 (out of 398,199)
- Total people vaccinated: 57.017 (without change of 57.017)
* 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.