Credit: Navy Medicine via Flickr
Wednesday’s Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) COVID update includes 922 new cases and nine deaths.
The new reported deaths bring the state total to 6,705 over the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 63% (4,224) were long-term care residents, including four of the last nine deaths.
As of March 7, the state reported that 1,086,936 people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 602,623 people have completed the vaccine doses 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 9, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 243, which exceeds the 231 reported Tuesday.
Of those hospitalized, 64 are in intensive care (up to 50) and 179 receive treatment that is not used in the ICU (less than 181).
Test rates and positivity
The 922 positive results of Tuesday’s update correspond to 20,704 completed tests, which created a daily test positivity rate of 4.45%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the Minnesota test positivity rate over the past seven days is 2.48%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percentage of positive percentages (divided by the total number of tests completed) of less than 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: 7,627,320 (to 7,606,434)
- Tested people: 3,533,579
- People with at least 1 vaccine: Wednesday TBD Update (up to 1,086,936)
- People with 2 vaccines: Wednesday TBD Update (up to 602,623)
- Positive cases: 493,013 (up to 492,108)
- Deaths: 6,705 – 368 of which are “probable *” (up to 6,696)
- Patients who no longer need isolation: 479,267 (up to 478,422)
* 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.