Credit: US Navy photo by Class I mass media specialist Kyle Steckler, via Flickr
Saturday’s coronavirus update from the Minnesota Department of Health includes another 54 deaths and more than 2,500 new cases of COVID-19.
Due to the fact that no data were reported on New Year’s Day, the data released on Saturday are for Thursday, New Year’s Eve. Figures for Friday and Saturday will be released in Sunday’s update.
There have now been 5,377 deaths caused by the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,464) come from long-term care, including 33 of the 54 reported on Saturday.
Minnesota has not yet confirmed the new variant of coronavirus circulating in Europe and other parts of the world.
The state is now providing updates on the number of people who have received COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. As of Jan. 2, the state says 57,017 people have been vaccinated in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are health care workers who have received the Pfizer vaccine.
hospitalization
Hospitalization figures are not updated over the weekend. As of December 30, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 895.
Of those hospitalized, 196 were in intensive care, and 699 received treatment that was not treated with intensive care.
Test rates and positivity
The 2,530 positive results in Saturday’s update come from a total of 41,646 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 6.07%. This marks an increase in cases and the positivity rate compared to the figures observed last week.
However, it is difficult to assess whether this means that the decrease in cases observed in December ends, given that there may be anomalies in reporting due to the holiday weekend.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive percentage rate (total of positives divided by total tests completed) of less than 5% for at least two weeks be required for the safe reopening of the economy. That 5% threshold is based on the total positives divided by the total tests.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the Minnesota test positive rate for the past seven days is 5.2%, with Minnesota no longer one of the states with a 7-day positive rate below 5% after reaching that mark for several days last week.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by numbers
- Total tests: 5,616,567 (out of 5,574,962)
- Tested persons: 2,982,853 (increasing from 2,972,804)
- Positive cases: 417,832 (of the 415,302)
- deaths: 5,377 – 176 of which are “probable *” (increasing from 5,323)
- Active cases: 19,633 (of the 18,222)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 398,199 (of the 397,080)
- Total number of people vaccinated: 57,017 (of the 44,638)
* 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.