Credit: Navy Medicine, via Flickr
Thursday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,505 new cases and six new deaths.
The recently reported deaths bring the state total to 6,762 over the course of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 63% (4,244) were resident in long-term care facilities.
As of March 16, the state has reported that 1,303,210 people have received at least 1 dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 764,275 people have completed the two doses of the vaccine necessary for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public panel to monitor the progress of the vaccine in Minnesota, and you can view it here.
Hospitalizations
As of March 17, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 297, up from 282 reported on Tuesday.
Of those hospitalized, 74 were in intensive care (over 67) and 223 were receiving treatment outside the ICU (over 215).
Test rates and positivity
The 1,505 positive results in Thursday’s update were 42,954 tests completed, creating a 3.5% daily test positivity rate
According to Johns Hopkins University, the Minnesota test positivity rate for the past seven days is 4.45%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage rate of positivity (total positives divided by the total of completed tests) 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.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total tests: 7,847,879 (over 7,805,641)
- People tested: 3,577,071 (over 3,565,769)
- People with at least 1 vaccine injection: 1,303,210 (over 1,284,612)
- People with 2 vaccines: 764,275 (over 746,829)
- Positive cases: 501.458 (over 499,962)
- Deaths: 6,762 – 369 of which are “probable *” (above 6,756)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 485,358 (out of 484,819)
* 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.