NIAID-RML
Sunday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health includes data from New Year’s Day and January. 2, and the combined total of both days includes 53 deaths and over 2,700 new laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
There were now 5,430 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,499) came from long-term care, including 35 of the 53 reported on Sunday.
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 Dec. 27, 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 2,714 positive results from Sunday’s update come from a total of 96,425 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 2.81%. The positives and tests are from Friday and Saturday, so the number is higher.
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 positivity rate in the last seven days is 5.62%, Minnesota is no longer one of the states with a positive rate of 7 days below 5%, after reaching this mark for several days last week.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by numbers
- Total tests: 5,713,240 (increasing from 5,616,567)
- Tested persons: 3,017,309 (of the 2,982,853)
- Positive cases: 420,544 (of the 417,832)
- deaths: 5,430 – 182 of which are “probable *” (increasing from 5,377)
- Active cases: 11,695 (low positive for outpatients and deaths)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 403,419 (out of 398,199)
- Total number of people vaccinated: 57,017 (without modification from 57,017)
* 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.