NIAID-RML
Sunday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health includes data from New Year’s Day and January. 2, and the combined total of both days includes 53 deaths and more than 2,700 new laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
There are now 5,430 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,499) were from long-term care, including 35 of the 53 reported Sunday.
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. Through December 27, 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 2,714 positive results in Sunday’s update came from a total of 96,425 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity of 2.81%. The positives and tests are from Friday and Saturday, so the higher numbers.
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, Minnesota’s positivity rate in the past seven days is 5.62%, while Minnesota is no longer one of the states with a 7-day positive rate of less than 5%, after it last week dropped that figure for a few days.
Coronavirus in Minnesota in numbers
- Total number of tests: 5,713,240 (from 5,616,567)
- People tested: 3,017,309 (from 2,982,853)
- Positive cases: 420,544 (from 417,832)
- Deaths: 5,430 – 182 of which “likely *” (up from 5,377)
- Active cases: 11,695 (positives deducted by patients from isolation and deaths)
- Patients who no longer require isolation: 403,419 (was 398,199)
- Total number of people vaccinated: 57,017 (no change from 57,017)
* 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.