Credit: Navy Medicine via Flickr
Saturday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,030 new cases and 17 new deaths.
The recently reported deaths bring the state’s total to 6,290 during the pandemic. Of those deaths, 63.3% (3,960) were long-term care residents, including seven of the 17 reported on Saturday.
As of Feb. 4, the state reported that 525,236 people received at least one dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, while 147,321 people completed both doses of the vaccine that are needed for the full effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public dashboard to track the progress of the vaccine in Minnesota and you can view it here.
Two new variants of coronavirus have been confirmed in Minnesota, including what was the first known case of the Brazil P.1 variant in the United States. This case involves a Minnesota who recently traveled to Brazil. There are 8 confirmed cases of variant B.1.1.7. It is believed that both new strains are more transmissible.
Hospitalizations
Hospital data is not updated over the weekend.
As of February 4, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 362. Of those hospitalized, 82 were in intensive care and 280 were receiving non-ICU treatment.
Statewide, 150 ICU beds were available. During the November increase, the state had less than 100 intensive care beds available. The number of beds available depends on the number of staff available, so the total is constantly changing.
Test rates and positivity
The 1,030 positive results in Saturday’s update come from a total of 34,448 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 2.99%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the test positivity rate in Minnesota in the last seven days is 3.49%, making it one of the lowest rates in the country.
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.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by numbers
- Total tests: 6,751,744 (from 6,717,419)
- Tested persons: 3,305,989 (of 3,296,876)
- People with at least 1 shot vaccine: 525,236 (increasing from 497,843)
- People with 2 vaccines: 147,321 (of the 138,212)
- Positive cases: 467,217 (of the 466,224)
- Deaths: 6,289 – 261 of which are “probable *” (increasing from 6,273)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 452,183 (out of 450,924)
* 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.