Credit: Navy Medicine, via Flickr
Tuesday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contains 1189 new cases and five new deaths.
The new deaths increase the death toll from the state to 7,311 in the course of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 61.7% (4,337) were residents of long-term care.
As of April 17, the state reported that 2,304,975 people had received at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,630,999 people had completed their vaccine range.
Fifty-two percent of Minnesotans 16 years and older received at least one shot, while 85% of the 65-year-old population had at least one dose of vaccine. Overall, 41% of the state’s population had at least one dose.
MDH has a public dashboard to track the progress of vaccines in Minnesota, and you can see it here.
Hospitalizations
As of April 19, the number of people with COVID-19 was hospitalized in Minnesota, 686, which is higher than the 684 reported Monday.
Of those admitted to the hospital, 193 were in intensive care (compared to 172 were reported Monday) and 493 received non-ICU treatment (less than 512).
This is how the surveys in Minnesota have progressed since March 7th.
- 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 2: 439 (337 non-ICU, 112 ICU)
- April 8: 595 (461 non-ICU, 134 ICU)
- April 14: 699 (531 non-ICU, 168 ICU)
- April 19: 686 (493 non-ICU, 193 ICU)
Test and positivity figures
The 1,189 positive results in Tuesday’s update were of 15,168 completed tests, resulting in a test positivity rate of 7.83%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positivity rate over the past seven days is 6.72%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage 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 positives, divided by total tests.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by Numbers
- Total tests: 8,880,741 (from 8,866,081)
- People tested: 3,915,190 (from 3,911,831)
- People shot with at least 1 vaccination: 2,304,975 (higher than 2,292,756)
- People who have completed. vaccine range: 1,630,999 (from 1,625,800)
- Positive cases: 558,850 (from 557,665)
- Deaths: 7,031 – 386 of these are “probably *” (compared to 7,026)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 534,889 (higher than 532,563)
* 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.