Friday’s COVID-19 update from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) includes 3,661 new cases and 20 newly reported deaths. Sixteen of the 20 deaths were in October and four happened in September.
The state’s death toll is 8,295 since the start of the pandemic. Of the total deaths, 56.4% (4,671) were residents of long-term care.
As of Oct. 6, the state reported that 3,420,016 people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 3,250,511 people have completed the vaccine series. The percentage of Minnesota’s population with at least one shot, based on age group:
- 12-15: 54%
- 16-17: 59%
- 18-49: 64%
- 50-64: 74%
- 65+: 90%
- Total population: 61.5%
58.4% of Minnesota’s total population, including children under the age of 12 who are not eligible for the vaccine, has completed the vaccine series. That jumps to 69.1% when excluding kids under the age of 12. MDH has a public dashboard to track vaccine progress in Minnesota, and you can view it here.
Hospitalizations
Through Oct. 7 the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota was 871 – down from 881 the day before. Of those hospitalized, 236 people are in intensive care and 635 were in general hospital care.
Here’s how many people are hospitalized based on regional location, though this doesn’t mean that each patient contracted the virus in these specific regions, as they may have been diverted depending upon available staffed beds.
- Metro: 119 ICU, 314 non-ICU (Thursday was 119, 298)
- Central: 42 ICU, 101 non-ICU (was 43, 101)
- Southeast: 25 ICU, 48 non-ICU (was 25, 61)
- Northeast: 25 ICU, 67 non-ICU (was 23, 74)
- Northwest: 12 ICU, 26 non-ICU (was 10, 25)
- South Central: 9 ICU, 37 non-ICU (was 11, 46)
- Southwest: 3 ICU, 23 non-ICU (was 2, 23)
- West Central: 1 ICU, 19 non-ICU (was 1, 19)
Testing and positivity rates.
The 3,661 positive results in Friday’s update were from 54,540 completed tests, creating a test positivity rate of 6.71%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota’s test positivity rate over the past seven days is 9.06%.
The World Health Organization recommends that a percent positive rate (total positives divided by total completed tests) of below 5% for at least two weeks is necessary to safely keep the economy open.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by the numbers
- Total tests: 12,855,286 (up from 12,800,638)
- People with at least 1 vaccine shot: 3,420,016 (up from 3,414,238)
- People who have completed vaccine series: 3,250,511 (up from 3,244,531)
- Positive cases: 735,636 (up from 732,001)
- Deaths: 8,275 – 477 of which are “probable*” (up from 8,275)
- Patients no longer requiring isolation: 701,975 (up from 700,598)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after testing positive using the COVID-19 antigen test, which is thought to be less accurate than the more common PCR test.