Credit: The National Guard, via Flickr
Saturday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contains 2,063 new cases and 11 new deaths.
This is the third day in a row that Minnesota has reported more than 2,000 cases, as the state is still experiencing a boom in the virus despite growing vaccination numbers.
The 11 new deaths increase the death toll from the state to 6,875 in the course of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 62.4% (4,286) were residents of long-term care, including four of the youngest 11 deaths.
As of April 1, the state reported that 1,770,290 people had received at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,129,863 people had completed their vaccination series.
Forty percent of Minnesotans 16 years and older received at least one shot.
MDH has a public dashboard to track vaccine progress in Minnesota, and you can see it here.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalization data are not updated on weekends.
As of April 1, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 439, which is higher than 438 Thursday.
Of those hospitalized until April 1, 112 were in intensive care (compared to 105 reported Thursday) and 327 received non-ICU treatment (less than 330).
this is how the surveys in Minnesota went over the past month.
- March 1: 251 (191 non-ICU, 60 ICU)
- March 7: 223 (177 non-ICU, 46 ICU)
- March 13: 255 (194 non-ICU, 61 ICU)
- March 20: 324 (246 non-ICU, 78 ICU)
- March 27: 356 (264 non-ICU, 92 ICU)
- April 1: 439 (327 non-ICU, 112 ICU)
Test and positivity rates
The 2063 positive results in Saturday’s update were from 35,558 completed tests, resulting in a daily test positivity rate of 5.8%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positivity rate over the past seven days is 6.75%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage of positive rate (total positive divided by total completed tests) be needed for at least two weeks below 5% to safely reopen the economy. The 5% threshold is based on total positive share through total tests.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by Numbers
- Total tests: 8,338,754 (from 8,303,506)
- People tested: 3,726,485 (from 3,717,258)
- People shot with at least 1 vaccination: 1 770 290 (higher than 1 720 811)
- People who have completed. vaccine range: 1,129,863 (compared to 1,088,332)
- Positive cases: 526 267 (from 524,203)
- Deaths: 6,875 – of which 379 are “probably *” (compared to 6,864)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 503 024 (from 501,188)
* 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.