COVID In Minnesota: Rolling Positivity Rate On The Rise Again After Briefly Dipping Below 5%

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The Minnesota Department of Health has updated their dashboards reflecting the benchmarks needed to continue dialing back restrictions due to COVID-19, and they indicate that for a brief moment around Christmas, the average seven-day positivity rate fell below 5%.

The state regards a positivity rate above 5% to be cause for caution, and above 10% to be high risk. The last time that figure was below 5% was in mid-September. The state’s most recent figure, however, is 6.3%, as of Dec. 27 (due to data lag).

It’s not clear whether the back to back Christmas-New Year’s holidays may be a factor in the spike. Most of the other figures on the Dial Back dashboard indicate upticks in virtually every benchmark — from new cases per 100,000 residents (slightly up to about 26), new hospital admissions per 100,000 (now just over 15), and cases indicating community spread (still about as high as ever, at 36%).

Also, the number of tests per 10,000 residents is as low as it’s been since the start of November.

RELATED: Wisconsin Pharmacist Who Destroyed COVID Vaccines Thought Drug Would Mutate DNA

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Department of Health just released its latest daily COVID case figures, and says there have been 1,612 more positive cases and another 18 deaths in the state due to the coronavirus. One of the deaths, in Wilkin County, was a person between 35 and 39 years old. In all, 5,461 have died in Minnesota as a result of COVID.

Given the number of tests newly processed — 15,666 — the presumed daily positivity rate hovers at 10%.

Three million people have been tested for the virus so far in Minnesota. Of the 425,261 people who have been diagnosed with COVID, about 406,667 no longer need to isolate.

In hospitals as of Jan. 4, there are 155 patients with COVID-19 requiring an ICU bed, while 687 additional patients with COVID-19 require non-ICU beds, an uptick of about 30 from the day before. More than 22,000 people have needed hospitalization for the virus since the pandemic began.

VACCINE LATEST

Health care systems in the state started to administer the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. According to MDH’s latest data, about 80,857 doses of the vaccine have been given so far in Minnesota: 67,672 of Pfizer vaccine and 13,138 of Moderna’s vaccine. That means there were about 2,500 more vaccinations performed in the last 24 hours.

Notably, the administered numbers reflect only what MDH is in charge of, since some vaccines were given to other places to administer. Those numbers are not known at this time.

Source: CBS Minnesota