Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday said he will ease restrictions meant to curb the spread of COVID-19 by allowing bars and restaurants to serve customers outdoors, letting gyms open at partial capacity and allowing small social gatherings.
Walz also said all elementary schools can provide in-person learning starting Jan. 18 if they take certain safety precautions.
The governor kept his ban on indoor service at bars and restaurants that have been in place since mid-November, when the state was struggling to deal with a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.
The severity of the pandemic has shown signs of improvement in recent weeks, and health experts say they believe Walz’s regulations were helpful in slowing dramatic growth in cases. But there are still hundreds of people in intensive care units and high rates of positive COVID-19 tests that signal the outbreak hasn’t receded to lower levels seen over the summer.
The Minnesota Department of Health reported 92 deaths on Wednesday, and there have been 982 deaths reported so far in December. The state is on pace to smash its record for deaths in a month — 1,136 in November.
Health experts say those deaths are in part because of the higher levels of cases before the shutdown measures and could decline in coming weeks. The state also says without further action Minnesota could have higher rates of case growth again and experience more death as a result.
“Minnesota’s post-Thanksgiving dropoff has been steeper than our surrounding states, and that is a testament to all of you,” Walz said in a speech announcing his latest restrictions, which he said will serve as a bridge until widespread vaccination. But Walz said later: “We are still at a dangerously high level of community spread.”
The single-day positive test rate Wednesday was 11.6 percent, Walz said. The seven-day positive case average, which lags by a week, is 10.4 percent. “It should be under 5 (percent) before we can start breathing a sigh of relief,” Walz said.
Walz’s restrictions come in the form of an executive order issued under authority he has invoked during the peacetime emergency. Most of the new guidelines begin Saturday and last until Jan. 11.
Social gatherings
Under Walz’s initial order, people could not gather with others from outside their own household. This will be relaxed starting Dec. 19 and lasting until Jan. 11. While the state says indoor gatherings are strongly discouraged, a maximum of 10 people from two households can visit indoors if they keep six feet of separation and take other precautions.
Up to 15 people from three different households can gather outdoors if they maintain physical distancing.
Elementary schools
Beginning Jan. 18, all elementary schools can hold in-person classes if they choose, but they have to adopt certain safety measures, which include giving staff personal protective equipment like face shields and masks and offering regular testing.
“What we do know is our youngest children are less susceptible to serious complications,” Walz said. “And I don’t want to minimize that, one child getting COVID is too many. But what we’ve learned is how to reduce that spread.”
[image_credit]Office of Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan[/image_credit]
Existing rules that determine when middle schools and high schools can hold in-person classes remain.
Sen. Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes, who will chair the Senate’s education committee when lawmakers convene in January, said the nearly two-month delay in opening more elementary schools is unnecessary and called on Walz to work with the Legislature on getting older children back into classrooms. “Being out of school has done great harm to our kids and every day they are not in school it gets worse,” Chamberlain said.
Restaurants, bars and other similar businesses
Starting Saturday, places like restaurants, coffee shops, bars and hookah bars can serve people outside at half capacity. There is a maximum of 100 people. The businesses can’t serve more than four customers seated at one table, must space those tables six feet apart, and must close between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. These limits last until Jan. 11.
[image_credit]Office of Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan[/image_credit]Gyms, fitness centers and health clubs
Beginning Saturday, gyms and other fitness operations can allow people in up to 25 percent of their normal capacity as determined by the fire marshall, with a maximum of 100 people in the building.
People must keep 12 feet of space from each other when exercising and 6 feet of space at other times.
[image_credit]Office of Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan[/image_credit]
Outdoor entertainment
Businesses that provide outdoor entertainment, such as racetracks, mini-golf and performance venues, can have 25 percent capacity starting Saturday with a maximum of 100 people as long as people keep 6 feet of distance from others outside their household.
Sports
Youth sports programs and organized sports for adults must stay closed for several more weeks, but can hold practices starting Jan. 4. Outdoor workouts or practices can be held as long as there are no spectators, players from three or fewer households and only one coach. Physical distancing must be kept between the players and coaches.
Walz is being sued over his youth sports restrictions, and the governor said in his executive order that while organized sports are riskier than individual exercise, they “also provide developmental opportunities for youth and mental and physical health benefits for Minnesotans of all ages.”
Weddings, funerals and religious services
The same rules Walz laid out in mid-November still apply to gatherings like weddings, funerals and religious services. The state recommends virtual events, but you can hold an in-person gathering at event spaces like a church as long as people maintain 6 feet of space between people of different households and adhere to an indoor limit of 50 percent capacity or a maximum of 250 people. Outdoor gatherings also can’t exceed 250 people.
Receptions and other events tied to weddings, funerals and celebrations like birthdays remain banned.
Walz says Minnesota ‘not out of the woods’
Even with vaccinations under way across the country, Walz said the state needs to preserve health care capacity to prevent deaths and keep schools open since inoculation isn’t widely available yet.
He urged Minnesotans not to gather, even with his new guidance allowing some socializing, and said a full rollback of his restrictions would be unwise. “We’re keeping the hand on the dial,” Walz said. “We’re not out of the woods. We still need to do those basic things.”
Walz also credited Minnesotans with limiting their activities over the last month, even through the Thanksgiving holiday. “You brought the curve down, you made the sacrifices necessary,” Walz said. “The space is starting to open up and that sunshine I told you about is here. Those COVID vaccines are here and more are on the way.”
Business groups say they are in crisis
In a statement, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce President Doug Loon said Wednesday that small businesses are at a “crisis point” and the new restrictions could mean “closing their doors forever.”
Despite a $216 million package of grants approved by lawmakers Monday, some argue it’s not enough to help businesses walloped by closures and other limits. “Businesses are doing their part to protect employees and customers,” Loon said. “We understand that this is a tough decision, but it’s also tough for businesses and their communities to hear it.”
House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt said he believes not enough cases have been tied back to bars and restaurants to warrant such closures, and said Walz “needs to allow our businesses to safely reopen their doors, and stop punishing our hospitality industry.”
“We have been begging the governor for more notice so businesses can plan for these latest changes,” said state Rep. Dave Baker, R-Willmar. “Today’s announcement is way too little, far too late — even if a business wanted to start outdoor dining in 20-degree weather, most won’t have time or resources to be ready for customers by the weekend.”
Baker said the continued closure of pools will be “devastating” for hotels and gyms.
Dozens of businesses have chosen to defy Walz’s executive orders and open lately, facing penalties.
Attorney General Keith Ellison in a statement said “the vast majority of businesses that we have worked with are complying with executive orders because they understand their responsibility to keep people safe and care about their customers, employees and communities.”
“Using our enforcement tools to force compliance on the few that are not complying or are threatening not to comply is a last resort, but we will use them when we need to,” Ellison said.
Health care groups applaud Walz’s executive order
Leaders from nine health care groups — CentraCare, Allina Health, Children’s Minnesota, Essentia Health, North Memorial Health, Hennepin Healthcare, HealthPartners, M Health Fairview and the Minnesota Hospital Association — said they supported Walz’s restrictions or called for continued vigilance to curb the spread of COVID-19.
“We appreciate Governor Walz’s actions to reduce community spread and help ensure that our hospitals and health systems can maintain our care capacity – the combination of physical space to care for patients as well as the necessary team members to deliver the care,” said Rahul Koranne, president and CEO of the Minnesota Hospital Association.
Nothing like eating outside on a late December night in Minnesota. Schools should have never been closed, absolutely no proof of children getting or spreading the virus. New study out of NYC shows 74% of COViD cases coming from homes of locked down people. 1.74% came from bars or restaurants and 0.6% came from gyms. Lockdowns do not work.
Joe, children and infants have died from COVID 19 and there is a pile of evidence proving that they transmit the virus. Ignorance kills dude, man up and learn something.
Paul, show me the study that backs up your assertion that children are dying. I have not seen a study that says that.
You have to look REAL hard Joe: https://www.minnpost.com/health/2020/07/the-daily-coronavirus-update-clay-county-infant-dies-from-covid-19/
From the Journal of the American Medical Association, that says your wrong (again).
Don’t expect you to read it, don’t want that precious world view disrupted by some facts.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2774445?guestAccessKey=e7e93128-2115-4730-89fb-023c8acfa867&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=121620
Kurt, the whole study was about folks ages 25-44 and how low the death rate is??
Yes Joe, we know you’d like to higher death counts, but what’s bizarre is that you keep bringing it up?
By the way, the infant and child infection rates are reported every day, to date we’ve had 7.6k infants ages 0-4 infected, 10k between the age of 5 and 9, and 15k between the ages of 10 and 14. So yeah, children transmit and acquire COVID. Here’s today dashboard, scroll down to case demographics to find the numbers I’m providing here: https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/situation.html#agem1
Can you provide a link to the study that lists those percentages? I searched a bit a couldn’t find it. Thx.
Going to look for the list of open businesses and give them my business. Wish we had a choice on our tax dollars.
When 2022 comes around, I hope all who were hurt by the Bully Gov remembers when they are in the voting booth.
I think I’ll head to WI for dinner.
Yeah, Gerry… everyone would open and making a ton of money if it weren’t for government bullies… oh and a worldwide pandemic that’s killed 4,000 Minnesotan’s and over 300k Americans because we didn’t have immunity, treatment, or a vaccine.
If you think Walz is a bully surely you voted against Don Trump, amiright?
Outside dining OK? Is this meant to be a sick joke?
Yeah, if any mistakes are being made it’s the failure to lock down enough and issue these goofy exceptions. Just remember, NONE of this makes ANY of these scenarios “safe”, so you make you’re own decisions. If you want to reduce your risk as much as possible, this virus is the same virus it’s always been- avoid crowds, stay six feet away, wear masks, and limit your interactions to 15 minutes or less. The governor may let people do stupid things, but that doesn’t mean they have to do them.
If you had happened to listen to Governor Walz speaking about the new guidelines, you would have heard him explain that the provision for outside service was provided specifically at the request of brewpubs who said that their customers were asking for that specific provision. So anyone who claims Walz is not trying to be responsive to his constituency is just not paying attention.
To all those open now folks, if y-all would have paid attention to the science including your master T**** ~ 11 months back, we would have been through this BS probably 6 or so months ago. Try to man/woman up, and quit blaming the governor for your excessively poor judgement.
Just to sum it up since the question regarding child and infant infection and death has been asked, you can find this info in the MDH COVID weekly report. Here’s the breakdown for MN:
For the age group 0-9 years old:
Total thus far for ages 0-9: 7,651
Non-ICU hospitalizations: 197
ICU hospitalizations: 46
Deaths: 1
Note, this is two groups combined, ages 0-4 and 0-9. The highest numbers of hospitalizations and the only death, occurred in the younger 0-4 group.
You can look at this data here: scroll down to page 22. https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/situation.html#agem1
Paul, kids 4 and under don’t go to school. Germany and the UK (among others) have done studies on kids in school and found essentially no transmission by the kids. They are also the least likely to have any issues with the virus. They are the ones that should be getting it to build herd immunity safely. We apparently didn’t learn that lesson from the 1918 flu pandemic.
Bob, children are getting infected, landing in ICU’s and dying. The kids in the 0-4 age group are hospitalized and dying at the highest rates. I don’t know how that information can be confusing. And remember, the cases only represent a fraction of the ACTUAL cases because we’re not testing ALL children, or everyone else for that matter.
This is a deadly virus, it’s killed more than 4,600 people in MN, what’s confusing about that fact? This isn’t a seasonal flue or a “cold” that you let burn through the population.
As for school attendance, yes it looks like a lot of children are getting infected outside properly distanced and regulated CLASSROOMS, but it’s a completely different story among athletes where outbreaks are rampant. The fact that children are running around the community transmitting infection more so than in their classrooms doesn’t tell us we can just let children get infected or open schools without restrictions. No age group, specially children, are isolated from all other age groups so you can’t contain those infections demographically.
I just realized I made a couple mistakes in my previous post: the total number of confirmed cases in the 0-9 age group is actually 17,000 not 7,000. And I dropped the wrong link in there, sorry.
The point is if we’ve 17,000 known cases of infected kids running around, that means we’ve probably had more than 100,000 infected kids running around, because again, only those with known exposures or symptoms get tested. Point being, if you think you can let that many kids run around without infecting anyone else you haven’t been paying attention. Again, 175 Biogen attendees in Boston went on to cause 300,000 infections. What do you happens if a 100,000 infected kids run around? If for no other reason we need limit transmission to kids to limit transmission in the community.
Herd immunity is a natural process that yields the highest numbers of infection, illness, and death. With deadly infections herd immunity only emerges after a disease had burned through the population killing and sickening as many people as it can. Herd immunity is how we dealt with the 1918 pandemic and the Black Death in the Middle Ages, and polio before we had vaccine. Anyone who thinks the highest possible number of casualties is the best way to control a pandemic can speak for themselves.
I don’t get it. Maybe these people who want to see the more people die before they take the pandemic seriously should tell us what if any ceiling of death they have in mind? OK so a single dead infant, 4,600 Minnesotan’s, 300k Americans aren’t enough? But what IS your ceiling? At what point have enough people died?
And there is basically no-chance that they could ever possibly transmit the covid to a teacher, bus driver, custodian, etc. and to the teachers… family etc. Evidently some folks haven’t learned a thing about the covid transmission problem of 2020 and overwhelming hospitals. “build herd immunity safely”? Is that like fighting a war safely? I think there was an article the other day that said “herd Immunity” based on the T**** plan would cost just shy of 3M deaths. I guess those folks would die safely.
Please forgive my previous error, here are the correct numbers from this weeks MDH summary regarding children 0-9 years old:
For the age group 0-9 years old:
Total cases thus far : 17,651
Non-ICU hospitalizations: 197
ICU hospitalizations: 46
Deaths: 1
Note, this is two groups combined, ages 0-4 and 0-9. The highest numbers of hospitalizations and the only death, occurred in the younger 0-4 group.
Here’s the correct link, it’s a PDF- scroll down to page 22. https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/covidweekly51.pdf
Paul, thank you for your thoughtful analysis and commentary. One would think that people are sick enough of this pandemic that they’d get serious about good simple practices. I sure am, but a few thousand yahoos out there are going to drag this out longer.
One interesting opinion was expressed recently in regards to who should get the vaccine first. The opinion was that after old folks and health care workers we should vaccinate all these people who want to go to bars and gyms. They are why we are still in this battle.
I sure respect the tough calls our governor is making. Imagine if one of these idiot Republican “leaders” had been governor at this time. Just think of trump on a local level. It’s not a pretty sight.
And by the way, after old folks and health care workers get the vaccine, they should give it to all these grocery store employees. They’ve been showing up to work since Day 1 last March, bless them.