Credit: Navy Medicine via Flickr
Friday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,708 new cases and 10 recently reported deaths, nine from deaths in August and one as of June.
The death toll in the state is 7,760 since the start of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 58.5% (4,536) were long-term care residents.
As of Aug. 18, the state reported that 3,268,572 (up 4,600 from Thursday’s report) have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 3,059,394 people have completed the series of vaccines. The percentage of Minnesota’s population with at least one trait, by age group:
- 12-15: 48%
- 16-17: 56%
- 18-49: 61%
- 50-64: 74%
- 65 years or older: 92%
- Total population: 59%
55.0% of Minnesota’s total population, including those under the age of 12 who are not eligible for the vaccine, have completed the vaccine series. This jumps to 65.1% when children under 12 are excluded. MDH has a public bulletin board to track the progress of vaccines in Minnesota and you can see it here.
Hospitalizations
As of Aug. 19, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 477 (up from 473 reported Thursday).
Of those hospitalized, 125 people were in intensive care and 352 in general hospital care.
Test rates and positivity.
The 1,708 positive results of Friday’s update came from 30,618 completed tests, which created a test positivity rate of 5.57%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s test positivity rate over the past seven days is 6.01%, which has been increasing as the Delta variant spreads, which has recently been lower than 1 %.
The World Health Organization recommends that a positive percentage rate (positive dividends divided by the total number of tests completed) of less than 5% be required for at least two weeks to keep the economy open safely. This 5% threshold is based on the total positives divided by the total tests.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by the numbers
- Total tests: 11,099,002 (with respect to 11,068,479)
- Tested people: 4,886,251 (compared to 4,869,414)
- People with at least 1 vaccine: 3,268,572 (compared to 3,264,937)
- People who have completed the vaccine series: 3,059,394 (to 3,056,221)
- Positive cases: 633,556 (with respect to 631,858)
- Deaths: 7,760 – 428 of which are “probable *” (up to 7,750)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 614,950 (up to 614,302)
* 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.