National Guard via Flickr
Wednesday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,611 new cases and 13 new deaths.
New deaths increase the state’s death toll to 7,044 during the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 61.5% (4,339) were residents of long-term care.
As of April 19, the state reported that 2,324,241 people had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,648,311 people had completed their vaccine series.
Fifty-two percent of 16-year-olds in Minnesota received at least one stroke, while 85.5% of the population over the age of 65 had at least one dose of vaccine. Overall, 41.8% 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
As of April 20, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 676, down from the 686 reported on Monday.
Of those hospitalized, 193 were in intensive care (not reported on Tuesday since 193) and 483 were receiving non-ICU treatment (down from 493).
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 20: 676 (483 non-ICU, 193 ICU)
Test rates and positivity
The 1,611 positive results from Wednesday’s update were from 24,501 tests completed, creating a test positivity rate of 6.57%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the test positive rate in Minnesota over the past seven days is 6.66%.
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 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: 8,904,956 (of 8,880,741)
- Tested persons: 3,923,029 (increasing from 3,915,190)
- People with at least 1 shot vaccine: 2,324,241 (of the 2,304,975)
- People who have finished. series of vaccines: 1,648,311 (of the 1,630,999)
- Positive cases: 560,450 (of the 558,850)
- Deaths: 7,044 – 387 of which are “probable *” (up from 7,031)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 537,130 (of the 534,889)
* 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.