Credit: Navy Medicine, via Flickr
Thursday’s COVID update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 1,505 new cases and six new deaths.
The new reported deaths bring the state total to 6,762 throughout the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 63% (4,244) were residents of long-term care.
As of March 16, the state reported that 1,303,210 people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 764,275 people have completed the two doses of vaccine that are 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 17, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 297, which exceeds the 282 reported Tuesday.
Of those hospitalized, 74 were in intensive care (up to 67) and 223 received treatment that did not belong to the ICU (up to 215).
Test rates and positivity
The 1,505 positive results of Thursday’s update came from 42,954 completed tests, creating a daily positivity rate of 3.5%
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: 7,847,879 (to 7,805,641)
- Tested people: 3,577,071 (up to 3,565,769)
- People with at least 1 vaccine: 1,303,210 (compared to 1,284,612)
- People with 2 vaccines: 764,275 (up to 746,829)
- Positive cases: 501,458 (up to 499,962)
- Deaths: 6,762 – 369 of which are “probable *” (up to 6,756)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 485,358 (up to 484,819)
* 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.