Friday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contains 1,449 new cases and nine new deaths.
The newly reported deaths bring the state to 6,771 in the course of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 63% (4,247) were residents of long-term care.
As of March 17, the state reported that 1,337,892 people had received at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 788,495 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.
Hospitalizations
As of March 18, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 316, which is higher than 297 Thursday.
Of those admitted to the hospital, 74 were in intensive care (no change) and 242 received non-ICU treatment (versus 223).
Test and positivity figures
The 1,449 positive results in Friday’s update were from 40,005 completed tests, resulting in a daily test positivity rate of 3.62%
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positivity rate over the past seven days is 4.45%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage of positive rate (total positive divided by total completed tests) for at least two weeks below 5% is needed to safely reopen the economy. The 5% threshold is based on total positive share through total tests.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by Numbers
- Total tests: 7,887,332 (from 7,847,879)
- People tested: 3 586 274 (from 3,577,071)
- People shot with at least 1 vaccination: 1,337,892 (from 1,303,210)
- People with 2 vaccine shots: 788,495 (higher than 764,275)
- Positive cases: 502 893 (from 501 458)
- Deaths: 6,771 – of which 369 are “probably *” (compared to 6,762)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 485 912 (from 485,358)
* 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.