The national guard via Flickr
Wednesday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contains 1,611 new cases and 13 new deaths.
The new deaths increase the death toll from the state to 7,044 in the course of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 61.5% (4,339) were residents of long-term care.
As of April 19, the state reported that 2,324,241 people had received at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,648,311 people had completed their vaccination series.
Fifty-two percent of Minnesotans 16 years and older received at least one shot, while 85.5 percent of the 65-year-old population had at least one dose of vaccine. Overall, 41.8% of the state’s population had at least one dose.
MDH has a public dashboard to track vaccine progress in Minnesota, and you can see it here.
Hospitalizations
As of April 20, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 676, which is lower than the 686 reported Monday.
Of those admitted to the hospital, 193 were in intensive care (no change of 193 was reported Tuesday) and 483 received non-ICU treatment (down from 493).
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 20: 676 (483 non-ICU, 193 ICU)
Test and positivity figures
The 1,611 positive results in Wednesday’s update were from 24,501 completed tests, which created a test positivity rate of 6.57%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s test positivity rate over the past seven days is 6.66%.
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: 8,904,956 (higher than 8,880,741)
- People tested: 3,923,029 (from 3,915,190)
- People shot with at least 1 vaccination: 2,324,241 (from 2,304,975)
- People who have completed. vaccine range: 1,648,311 (from 1,630,999)
- Positive cases: 560 450 (from 558 850)
- Deaths: 7,044 – 387 of which are “probably *” (compared to 7,031)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 537,130 (higher than 534,889)
* 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.