Credit: Maryland National Guard via Flickr
Saturday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 2,429 new cases and 10 new deaths.
New deaths increase the state’s death toll to 7,005 during the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 61.9% (4,326) were residents of long-term care.
As of April 15, the state reported that 2,241,000 people had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,563,210 people had completed their vaccine series.
Fifty-one percent of 16-year-olds in Minnesota received at least one stroke, while 85% of the population over the age of 65 had at least one dose of vaccine. In general, 40% of the state’s population had at least one dose.
MDH has a public dashboard to track the progress of the vaccine in Minnesota and you can view it here.
hospitalization
Hospital data is not updated by the state over the weekend.
As of April 15, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 671, down from 699 reported Thursday.
Of those hospitalized, 165 were in intensive care (down from 168 reported Wednesday) and 506 were receiving non-ICU treatment (down from 531).
This is how the hospitalizations in Minnesota have progressed since March 7.
- 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 15: 671 (506 non-ICU, 165 ICU)
Test rates and positivity
The 2,429 positive results in Saturday’s update were from 41,330 completed tests, creating a test positivity rate of 5.87%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the test positivity rate in Minnesota over the past seven days is 7.16%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive percentage rate (total positive divided by total completed tests) 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: 8,804,249 (increasing from 8,764,206)
- Tested persons: 3,887,322 (up from 3,874,978)
- People with at least 1 shot vaccine: 2,241,000 (up from 2,198,635)
- People who have finished. series of vaccines: 1,563,210 (of the 1,520,040)
- Positive cases: 554,536 (of the 552,117)
- Deaths: 7,005 – 385 of which are “probable *” (increasing from 6,995)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 527,674 (out of 524,915)
* 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.