MinnPost provides updates on coronavirus in Minnesota Sunday through Friday. The information is published following a press phone call with members of the Walz administration or after the release of daily COVID-19 figures by the Minnesota Department of Health.
Here are the latest updates from September 20, 2020:
Two more Minnesotans have died of COVID-19, the Minnesota Department of Health said Sunday, for a total of 1,965.
Of the people whose deaths were announced Sunday, one was in their 90s and one was in their 60s. One person who died was a resident of a long-term care facility. Of the 1,965 COVID-19 deaths reported in Minnesota, 1,423 have been among residents of long-term care.
The current death toll only includes Minnesotans with lab-confirmed positive COVID-19 tests.
MDH also said Sunday there have been 90,017 total confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Minnesota. The number of confirmed cases is up 1,296 from Saturday’s count and is based on 22,553 new tests. You can find the seven-day positive case average here.
The number of new cases reported Sunday sets a single-day high for the state. On the second highest day, Aug. 27, MDH reported an increase of 1,154 new cases over the prior day’s count.
On Saturday, MDH reported an increase of 914 cases from Friday’s count and 13 additional deaths — eight of which were among residents of long-term care facilities. The state said those case numbers were based on 23,157 new tests.
Minnesota has now reported an average of more than 900 new COVID-19 cases per day since Thursday, but it has also reported more than 19,000 tests in each of those days. Both numbers are higher than is typical.
Since the start of the outbreak, 7,163 Minnesotans have been hospitalized and 248 are currently in the hospital, 123 of which are in intensive care. While the number of people in the ICU is down by 11, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased by a net of seven. You can find more information about Minnesota’s current ICU usage and capacity here.
Of the 90,017 confirmed positive cases in Minnesota, 81,336 are believed to have recovered.
More information on cases can be found here.
Today on MinnPost
- We’re going to have to wait a little longer for election results this year due to a big uptick in mail-in voting driven by the pandemic.
- Asking yourself how long it’s been since this all started? Us too.
- As always, a look at the numbers on the MinnPost COVID-19 dashboard.
Around the web
- Nearly 11,000 people have been exposed to the coronavirus on flights, reports the Washington Post. But tying any exposure directly to transmission of cases is tricky.
- Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on a flight that goes nowhere meant for people who enjoy commercial flights.
MDH’s coronavirus website: https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/index.html
Hotline, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.: 651-201-3920
The 914 new cases coming from 23k+ tests is an infection rate of 0.039. Is that really a reason to shut down schools and put folks out of business? Time for USA and Minnesota to get back to normal. Protect the vulnerable, elderly folks with multiple underlying health issues and allow the rest to get back to living. You can’t continue on our current path, it is hurting everyone.
Joe, the 4% rate you cite and the next day’s 5.75% rate average to 4.8% – 2210 new cases for 45710 tests. That’s about 1 test in 20 being a person found positive for covid-19. To my mind, yes, that is good reason to take precautions with distance learning for students. It’s certainly not ideal, but neither is spreading a deadly infectuous disease through our classrooms into students’ homes. And, again, the goal is not to put people out of work or out of business, the goal is to save people’s lives.
I’ve been saying for months now that until we get to around 2% of the population testing positive (around 114,000 cases), the numbers will stay in this range. Once we get to that 2% area, then you will see significant declines in new cases followed shortly by hospitalizations and then deaths.
That’s the level of herd immunity. Every state that has gotten there has seen fast drops in new cases. NY got there in April/May. Their numbers have been flatlined at a very low level since June.
You are misinformed. No scientists think herd immunity is achieved at anything nearly as low as 2%. New York’s cases dropped, not because of any 2%, but rather because they have been wearing masks and following guidelines. In NY, enough people got ill early on, so most folks know someone who got sick or died, so they are following the rules. Our numbers won’t drop until more Minnesotans start following guidelines.
Janice, with an infection rate of 0.039 for Minnesotans and a death rate of 0.0003 (1,965 deaths population of 5.6+M), when do you “allow” people to work, go to school, go to church, get back to normal? FYI, of the total deaths in Minnesota 1,423 have come from LTC facilities leaving 542 deaths from COViD 19. That is a death rate of 0.00009, you want to hurt children, workers and every Minnesotan for that?
What has hurt workers is not taking Covid seriously. We might be ready to open up now if we didn’t have a president determined to kill jobs and close businesses.
Pat, you have an infection rate of 0.039 now, what rate would make you comfortable to open up Minnesota?
Joe,
Given that you have said that Covid-19 is the Flu and that it also has DNA we have learned to be skeptical of anything you say.
First, you should not be comparing the death rate with the overall population, but rather with those that have been infected.
But, what I find most disturbing is your complete lack of understanding that Covid survivors may not be fine long-term. In fact, people who know a whole lot more than you are telling us that survivors (“long haulers”) may well have damage that is permanent. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351
I would think you would be honest enough to move past the “fine or dead” argument.
Janice, we have 3 separate studies out now showing 50% of people are already immune or have enough immunity to fight off the virus.
We have basically every expert saying for months now that for every positive test there are 10 people out there with it that we don’t know about. So getting to 2% positive means it’s really more like 20%.
50% + 20% = 70%. The level needed for herd immunity. Go here https://covidtracking.com/data and look at any state. Run the numbers. Divide total positive cases by population. Then look at their graphs.
Wearing a mask does nothing. I’ve cited dozens of scientific studies that prove that. None of you have ever cited a single randomized controlled trial that shows a mask will make a difference. You can’t because no such trials exist. As further proof, look up any state that issued a mask mandate. Every single one except New York had a large increase in cases 3+ weeks after doing so. New York had already peaked a week or so before the mandate happened. They were already at herd immunity and on the decline.
“Wearing a mask does nothing.”
This is flat out false and rebutted with even minimal research. Your confirmation bias has got the better of you.
I don’t know if there are any randomized controlled trials for mask research. But the reason for not doing this research is obvious and reflects ethical standards: You don’t deliberately expose people to a potentially health-harming and lethal disease when we already have good reason to think you will do this if they don’t wear masks in public.
But this isn’t the only way to determine if masks are effective and to what extent in protecting against the transmission of coronavirus.
No doubt you didn’t detect the internal contradiction and double standard in your comment: If masks don’t work and you have “proof” of this (a term not typically used in science), then presumably they have performed the research you say doesn’t exist. But if that research doesn’t exist then you have little to no basis for claiming that the research proves that masks are not effective.
And then there’s the matter of you having in the past referred to an imagined Harvard study to back up your claim that allegedly refuted mask wearing (or social distancing). Do you still maintain that this study exists? If so, where is it?
“Janice, we have 3 separate studies out now showing 50% of people are already immune or have enough immunity to fight off the virus.”
We have nothing of the kind. We have studies showing that anywhere from 20 to 50% of the patients studied have pre-existing reactivity to COVID-19. We don’t know if that reactivity prevents infection or prevents against severe disease. We also don’t know how long that reactivity lasts. We also have the authors of these studies saying that, while the results are significant, the populations studied are too small to allow for exact estimates of immunity.
According to an article in Nature, “For COVID-19, which has an estimated infection fatality ratio of 0.3–1.3%1,5, the cost of reaching herd immunity through natural infection would be very high, especially in the absence of improved patient management and without optimal shielding of individuals at risk of severe complications. Assuming an optimistic herd immunity threshold of 50%, for countries such as France and the USA, this would translate into 100,000–450,000 and 500,000–2,100,000 deaths, respectively.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00451-5
Well, let’s see. We’ve have around 6.8 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US to date. That’s certainly hovering around 2% of the population, if not already over it. So under Mr Barnes analysis above, we have reached heard immunity and the pandemic is effectively over.
Yet for some reason Trump and his Task Force have not come out to the podium to announce this happy news. How can that be? They can’t perform the simple calculations set out by Mr Barnes? What am I missing? Could it be he’s wrong?