Credit: U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communications Specialist 1st Class Kyle Steckler, via Flickr
Saturday’s coronavirus update from the Minnesota Department of Health contains 54 deaths and more than 2,500 new cases of COVID-19.
As no data was reported on New Year’s Day, the data released on Saturday is from Thursday, New Year’s Eve. Figures for both Friday and Saturday will be announced in the Sunday update.
There are now 5,377 deaths due to the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,464) come from long-term care, including 33 of the 54 reported on Saturday.
Minnesota has yet to confirm the new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading in Europe and other parts of the world.
The state is now providing updates on how many people have received the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. As of Jan. 2, the state said 57,017 people had been vaccinated in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are health workers who received the Pfizer vaccine.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalization figures are not updated on weekends. As of Dec. 30, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 895.
Of those admitted to the hospital, 196 were in intensive care and 699 received non-ICU treatment.
Test and positivity rates
The 2,530 positive results in Saturday’s update were a total of 41646 completed tests, resulting in a daily test positivity rate of 6.07%. This indicates an increase in cases and the positivity rate compared to the numbers seen last week.
However, it is difficult to determine whether this means that the decline in the cases seen in December will end, as there may be deviations due to the holiday weekend.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage positive rate (total positive divided by total completed tests) of at least two weeks below 5% is needed to safely reopen the economy. The 5% threshold is based on total positive share through total tests.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positive rate over the past seven days is 5.2%, while Minnesota is no longer one of the states with a 7-day positive rate of less than 5%, which last week dropped some days scored the point.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by Numbers
- Total tests: 5,616,567 (from 5,574,962)
- People tested: 2,982,853 (versus 2,972,804)
- Positive cases: 417 832 (from 415 302)
- Deaths: 5,377 – of which 176 are “probably *” (as opposed to 5,323)
- Active cases: 19,633 (compared to 18,222)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 398 199 (from 397 080)
- Total people vaccinated: 57,017 (from 44,638)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after testing positive using the COVID-19 antigen test, which is thought to be less accurate than the more common PCR test.