Credit: Noor Joonas / Central Health Laboratory via Flickr
Friday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,449 new cases and nine new deaths.
The recently reported deaths bring the state total to 6,771 during 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 received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 788,495 people completed both doses of the vaccine that are needed for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public dashboard to track the progress of the vaccine in Minnesota and you can view it here.
hospitalization
As of March 18, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 316, which is up from 297 reported on Thursday.
Of those hospitalized, 74 were in intensive care (no changes) and 242 received non-ICU treatment (compared to 223).
Test rates and positivity
The 1,449 positive results from Friday’s update were from 40,005 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 3.62%
According to Johns Hopkins University, the test positive rate in Minnesota over the past seven days is 4.45%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive percentage rate (total positive divided by the total number of tests completed) of less than 5% for at least two weeks be needed to safely reopen the economy. That 5% threshold is based on the total positives divided by the total tests.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by numbers
- Total tests: 7,887,332 (up from 7,847,879)
- Tested persons: 3,586,274 (from 3,577,071)
- People with at least 1 shot vaccine: 1,337,892 (increasing from 1,303,210)
- People with 2 vaccines: 788,495 (of the 764,275)
- Positive cases: 502,893 (from 501,458)
- Deaths: 6,771 – 369 of which are “probable *” (increasing from 6,762)
- Patients who no longer require isolation: 485,912 (from 485,358)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after a positive test using the COVID-19 antigen test, which is thought to be less accurate than the more common PCR test.