Credit: Noor Joonas / Central Health Laboratory via Flickr
Friday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,449 new cases and nine new deaths.
The newly reported deaths bring the state’s total to 6,771 during the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 63% (4,247) were long-term residents.
Through March 17, the state reported that 1,337,892 people received at least 1 dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 788,495 people completed both doses of vaccine necessary for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public dashboard to track vaccine progress in Minnesota, and you can watch it here.
Hospital admissions
Through March 18, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 316, which is an increase from 297 reported Thursday.
Of those hospitalized, 74 were in intensive care (no change) and 242 received non-ICU treatment (versus 223).
Test and positivity rates
The 1,449 positive results in Friday’s update came from 40,005 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity of 3.62%
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positivity rate in the past seven days is 4.45%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive rate (total number of positives 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.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total number of tests: 7,887,332 (higher than 7,847,879)
- People tested: 3,586,274 (higher than 3,577,071)
- People with at least 1 vaccine shot: 1,337,892 (from 1,303,210)
- People with 2 vaccination shots: 788,495 (from 764,275)
- Positive cases: 502,893 (from 501,458)
- Deaths: 6,771 – 369 of which “likely *” (up from 6,762)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 485,912 (higher than 485,358)
* 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.