Credit: Noor Joonas / Central Health Laboratory via Flickr
The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Friday’s COVID update includes 1,449 new cases and nine deaths.
The new reported deaths bring the state total to 6,771 over the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 63% (4,247) were residents of long-term care.
As of March 17, the state reported that 1,337,892 people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 788,495 people have completed the vaccine doses needed for the maximum effect of the vaccines.
MDH has a public bulletin board to track the progress of vaccines in Minnesota and you can see it here.
Hospitalizations
As of March 18, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 316, which exceeds the 297 reported Thursday.
Of those hospitalized, 74 were in intensive care (unchanged) and 242 received treatment that was not used in the ICU (up to 223).
Test rates and positivity
The 1,449 positive results of Friday’s update came from 40,005 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 3.62%
According to Johns Hopkins University, the Minnesota test positivity rate over the past seven days is 4.45%.
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.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by the numbers
- Total tests: 7,887,332 (compared to 7,847,879)
- Tested people: 3,586,274 (up to 3,577,071)
- People with at least 1 vaccine: 1,337,892 (compared to 1,303,210)
- People with 2 vaccines: 788,495 (up to 764,275)
- Positive cases: 502,893 (up to 501,458)
- Deaths: 6,771 – 369 of which are “probable *” (up to 6,762)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 485,912 (up to 485,358)
* 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.