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Saturday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contains 870 new cases and 11 deaths.
The newly reported deaths bring the state to 6,423 in the course of the pandemic. Of the deaths, 62.8% (4,044) were residents of long-term care, including six of the 11 reported on Saturday.
As of February 17, the state reported that 742,760 people had received at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 315,284 people had completed both doses of vaccination required for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public dashboard to track vaccine progress in Minnesota, and you can see it here.
Two new variants of the coronavirus have been confirmed in Minnesota, including what was the first known case of the Brazil P.1 variant in the United States. The case involves a Minnesotan who traveled to Brazil. There are 8 confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7 variant. Both new strains are believed to be more transmissible.
Hospitalizations
Hospital data are not updated on weekends.
Until February 17, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 282 – the lowest since September 20 (248). Of those admitted to the hospital, 59 were in intensive care and 223 received non-ICU treatment.
In that context, Minnesota reached a peak of 1840 COVID hospitalizations in late November.
Overall, there were 155 crew members available for ICU beds. During the November boom, the state had fewer than 100 ICU beds. The number of available beds depends on the number of available staff, and the total is therefore constantly changing.
Test and positivity rates
The 870 positive results in Saturday’s update were a total of 32,110 completed tests, resulting in a daily test positivity of 2.7%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the test positivity rate of Minnesota over the past seven days is 3.29%. This is about the same rate as Minnesota had in September before an increase in cases raised the rate to above 15% in November.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive rate percentage (total positive divided by total completed tests) of less than 5% is required for at least two weeks to safely reopen the economy. The 5% threshold is based on total positives divided by total tests.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by Numbers
- Total tests: 7,132,441 (from 7,100,497)
- People tested: 3,406,347 (compared to 3,398,492)
- People shot with at least 1 vaccination: 742,760 (higher than 728,081)
- People with 2 vaccine shots: 315,284 (versus 286,543)
- Positive cases: 478,157 (higher than 477,287)
- Deaths: 6,423 – 270 of these are “probably *” (compared to 6,412)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 464,504 (versus 463,454)
* 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.