Credit: Photo of the US Navy by 1st class mass communications specialist Kyle Steckler, via Flickr
Saturday’s coronavirus update from the Minnesota Department of Health includes 54 more deaths and more than 2,500 new cases of COVID-19.
Since no data is reported on New Years Day, the data released on Saturday is from Thursday, New Year’s Eve. Figures for both Friday and Saturday will be released in the Sunday update.
There are now 5,377 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,464) were from long-term care, including 33 of the 54 reported Saturday.
Minnesota has yet to confirm the new variant of the coronavirus circulating in Europe and other parts of the world.
The state is now providing updates on how many people have received the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. As of January 2, the state says 57,017 people have been vaccinated in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are health professionals who received the Pfizer vaccine.
Hospital admissions
Hospital admissions are not updated on weekends. On 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 non-ICU treatment.
Test and positivity rates
The 2,530 positive results in Saturday’s update came from a total of 41,646 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity of 6.07%. This marks an increase in the number of cases and the positivity rate compared to last week’s numbers.
However, it is difficult to estimate whether this means that the dip in the cases observed in December is coming to an end, as there may be anomalies in reporting due to the holiday weekend.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive rate (total positive divided by total tests completed) of less than 5% for at least two weeks is required to safely reopen the economy. That 5% threshold is based on the total number of positives divided by the total number of tests.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the positivity rate in Minnesota in the past seven days is 5.2%, while Minnesota is no longer one of the states with a 7-day positive rate less than 5%, after last week that figure was few days.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total number of tests: 5,616,567 (higher than 5,574,962)
- People tested: 2,982,853 (from 2,972,804)
- Positive cases: 417,832 (from 415,302)
- Deaths: 5,377 – 176 of which “likely *” (above 5,323)
- Active cases: 19,633 (from 18,222)
- Patients who no longer require isolation: 398,199 (from 397,080)
- Total number of people vaccinated: 57,017 (from 44,638)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after a positive test using the COVID-19 antigen test, which is believed to be less accurate than the more common PCR test.