Credit: Navy Medicine via Flickr
Thursday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contains 907 new cases and a total of 24 deaths.
The newly reported deaths bring the state to 6343 in the course of the pandemic. Of the deaths, 63% (3,996) were residents of long-term care, including 13 of the 24 reported on Thursday.
One of the recently reported deaths was a 35-39 year old person from Anoka County. This is the 26th death of anyone in that age group. On Wednesday, the state reported the second COVID-related death of a child under the age of 10 in Minnesota.
As of February 9, the state reported that 599,218 people had received at least 1 dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 177,239 people had completed both doses of vaccination required for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public dashboard to track the progress of vaccines 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
As of Feb. 10, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 320. Of those admitted to the hospital, 78 were in intensive care and 242 received non-ICU treatment.
Overall, there were 174 ICU beds crew available. 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 907 positive results in Thursday’s update were a total of 43,203 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 2.1%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positive rate over the past seven days is 3.46%, making it one of the lowest rates in the country.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage positive rate (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: 6 871 077 (from 6,828,887)
- People tested: 3,337,790 (from 3 327 336)
- People shot with at least 1 vaccination: 599,218 (higher than 583,602)
- People with 2 vaccine shots: 177,239 (higher than 168,495)
- Positive cases: 470,803 (from 469 905)
- Deaths: 6,343 – 262 of which “is probably *” (versus 6,319)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 456,849 (from 456,244)
* 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.