Mayo Clinic
Sunday’s coronavirus update from the Minnesota Department of Health is a combination of results collected Dec. 25-26, and it reveals 40 more deaths and more than 2,500 additional lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19.
There are now 5,147 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which 64.7% (3,332) were from long-term care, including 27 of the 40 reported Sunday.
The positive news is that the rate of positivity testing continues to decline and Minnesota has dropped to just over 20,000 active cases, which is well below the peak of over 50,000 active cases in mid-November.
Hospital admissions
Hospital admissions are not updated on weekends.
Through December 23, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota is 1,048. This is a decrease from the 1,060 hospitalized since Tuesday.
Of those hospitalized, 238 were in intensive care and 810 received non-ICU treatment.
Test and positivity rates
The 2,534 positive results in Sunday’s update were from a total of 87,990 tests completed, creating a daily test positivity of 2.88%, which is a step in the right direction in terms of how widespread the virus can be in Minnesota.
The World Health Organization recommended in May that a positive rate (total number of positives divided by total tests completed) of less than 5% for at least two weeks is needed 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 Minnesota positivity rate in the past seven days is 5.18%. There are only four states in the US below a test positivity rate of 5% from a 7-day moving average, and Minnesota could soon become fifth if the current trend continues.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total number of tests: 5,480,439 (from 5,392,411)
- People tested: 2,947,634 (higher than 2,918,243)
- Positive cases: 409,061 (from 406,545)
- Deaths: 5,107 – 154 of which “likely *” (up from 5,107)
- Active cases: 20,142 (lower than 23,840)
- Patients who no longer require isolation: 388,919 (from 382,705)
* 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.