Credit: Navy Medicine via Flickr
Thursday’s COVID-19 report from the Minnesota Department of Health includes just over 2,700 new cases and 83 deaths, including a person in their 20s from Hennepin County.
The 83 newly reported deaths bring the number of COVID-19 fatalities in Minnesota during the pandemic to 4,658. 3,034 (65%) of the total are deaths from long-term care, including 52 of 83 reported Thursday.
The state reported 1,065 deaths in the first 17 days of December after reporting 1,140 fatalities in November, by far the deadliest month in Minnesota so far.
Hospital admissions
Through December 16, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota is 1,222. The number has fallen since it hit a high of 1,840 on November 30. Of currently hospitalized patients, 289 patients are in intensive care and 933 are receiving non-ICU treatment.
This is how many people with COVID-19 were in intensive care per region, through December 16:
- Metro: 193 (instead of 195 the day before)
- Central: 37 (lower than 44)
- Northeast: 25 (below 27)
- Southeast: 21 (from 24)
- Northwest: 6 (below 8)
- South Central: 5 (unchanged)
- West Central: 1 (higher than 0)
- Southwest: 1 (unchanged)
Statewide, there were 128 (up from 130 the day before) available staffed IC beds until December 16. These figures are directly affected by both the number of patients in the ICU (for all health reasons, not just COVID-19) and the number of staff available. You can see the breakdown by region here / below.
- Metro: 45 staffed ICU beds available
- Central: 19
- Northeast: 11
- Southeast: 19
- Northwest: 15
- South Central: 2
- West Central: 10
- Southwest: 7
Note: Hospital totals are preliminary and may be adjusted in the coming days.
Test and positivity rates
The 2,775 positive results in Thursday’s update were out of a total of 47,704 tests completed, creating a daily test positivity of 5.82%.
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, Minnesota positive rate over the past seven days is 8.40%.
The 47,704 tests completed were from 14,637 people. People are often tested more than once, so the test positivity rate in sharing positives by people tested is 18.95% today.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total number of tests: 5,033,129 (higher than 4,985,470)
- People tested: 2,808,530 (from 2,793,893)
- Positive cases: 389,171 (from 386,412)
- Deaths: 4,658 – 124 of which “likely *” (higher than 4,575)
- Active cases: 30,504 (from 30,028)
- Patients who no longer require isolation: 358,667 (from 356,384)