NIAID-RML
The Minnesota Department of Health’s COVID-19 update on Sunday includes data for New Year’s Day and January. 2, and the combined total of the two days includes 53 deaths and more than 2,700 new laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
There have now been 5,430 deaths from the virus during the pandemic, of which (64.4%) (3,499) came from long-term care, including 35 of the 53 Sundays reported.
Minnesota has not yet confirmed the new variant of coronavirus circulating in Europe and other parts of the world.
The state now provides updates on how many people have received COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. As of Dec. 27, the state says 57,017 people have been vaccinated in Minnesota, the vast majority of whom are health workers who have received the Pfizer vaccine.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalization figures are not updated on weekends. As of December 30, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 895.
Of those hospitalized, 196 were in intensive care and 699 were receiving treatment that was not used in the ICU.
Test rates and positivity
The 2,714 positive results of Sunday’s update came from a total of 96,425 tests completed, creating a daily test positivity rate of 2.81%. The positives and tests are Friday and Saturday, hence the highest figures.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage of positive percentages (divided by the total number of tests completed) below 5% be needed for at least two weeks to reopen the economy safely. This 5% threshold is based on the total positives divided by the total tests.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the Minnesota test positive rate over the past seven days is 5.62%, with Minnesota no longer one of the states with a 7-day positive rate below 5%, having achieved this marks for a few days last week.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by the numbers
- Total tests: 5,713,240 (compared to 5,616,567)
- Tested people: 3,017,309 (to 2,982,853)
- Positive cases: 420,544 (up to 417,832)
- Deaths: 5,430 – 182 of which are “probable *” (up to 5,377)
- Active cases: 11,695 (positives subtracted by patients for isolation and deaths)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 403,419 (up to 398,199)
- Total people vaccinated: 57,017 (no changes since 57,017)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after testing positive for the COVID-19 antigen test, which is thought to be less accurate than the more common PCR test.