Credit: Navy Medicine via Flickr
Saturday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 870 new cases and 11 deaths.
The newly reported deaths bring the state’s total over the course of the pandemic to 6,423. Of those deaths, 62.8% (4,034) were long-term care residents, including six of the 11 reported Saturday.
Through February 17, the state reported that 742,760 people received at least 1 dose of the a COVID-19 vaccine, while 315,284 people completed both doses of vaccine required for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public dashboard to track vaccine progress in Minnesota, and you can watch it here.
Two new variants of the coronavirus have been confirmed in Minnesota, including the first known case of the P.1 variant in Brazil in the United States. That case involves a Minnesota man who traveled to Brazil. There are 8 confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7 variant. Both new strains are believed to be more transferable.
Hospital admissions
Hospital information is not updated on weekends.
Through February 17, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 282 – the lowest number since September 20 (248). Of those hospitalized, 59 were in intensive care and 223 received non-ICU treatment.
For context, Minnesota peaked at 1,840 COVID hospital admissions in late November.
Statewide there were 155 manned IC beds available. During the November peak, the state had fewer than 100 staffed IC beds available. The number of available beds depends on the number of available staff, so the totals are constantly changing.
Test and positivity rates
The 870 positive results in Saturday’s update came from a total of 32,110 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity of 2.7%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s positivity rate in the past seven days is 3.29%. It’s about the same percentage that Minnesota had in September, before a rise in the number of cases pushed the rate up above 15% in November.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive rate (total 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: 7,132,441 (from 7,100,497)
- People tested: 3,406,347 (was 3,398,492)
- People with at least 1 vaccine shot: 742,760 (higher than 728,081)
- People with 2 vaccination shots: 315,284 (from 286,543)
- Positive cases: 478,157 (from 477,287)
- Deaths: 6,423 – 270 of them are “likely *” (was 6412)
- Patients who no longer require isolation: 464,504 (from 463,454)
* 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.