According to Ehresmann, business growth in the state is still slowing. Jan Malcolm, MDH commissioner, said the positive figure of seven days is currently at 3.9%, which falls under the warning category. Ehresmann said hospitalizations are also declining.
While the state needs even more vaccines, Ehresmann said the state is making progress by ‘getting vaccines in the gun’. As of Thursday, more than 777,000 Minnesotans had received at least one vaccine dose.
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While Ehresmann and Malcolm talked about promising developments, they urged Minnesotans to continue to be careful and follow guidelines.
“Until we finally reach the goal of crushing COVID, we must all be vigilant,” Ehresmann said.
The discovery and spread of new coronavirus variants is one of the areas that Ehresmann pointed out when he spoke about the need to continue to be careful.
Currently, there are 18 cases of the British variant detected in Minnesota and two cases of the Brazilian variant.
Malcolm said the presence of the variant puts the state in a ‘race against time’ to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.
The commissioner added that fair and ethical decisions around the distribution of the vaccine would remain critical to the state.
“The strategy for distributing vaccines to the state is to meet people where they are and make it as easy as possible for people to be vaccinated as the stock builds up,” Malcolm said.