Coronavirus in Minnesota: Cases rise, but ICU hospitalizations remain low
COVID-19 ICU hospitalizations remain flat compared to last week, while non-ICU hospitalizations have risen.
COVID-19 ICU hospitalizations remain flat compared to last week, while non-ICU hospitalizations have risen.
Data from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) show the state added 3,589 new COVID-19 cases between April 6 and April 12, averaging 513 new cases per day.
Wastewater data from the Metropolitan Council suggest BA.2 is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the Twin Cities.
That doesn’t mean everyone age 50 and up needs to rush out and get a second booster immediately, though.
The coronavirus variant spreads even faster than omicron, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee it will cause as big a wave of cases and hospitalizations as omicron did.
Case counts did tick up slightly this week compared to the previous week, but are very low compared to levels at the beginning of the year.
New cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all down in the state.
While some experts praised the move as an appropriate shift from a pandemic to an endemic public health posture, others worried that the government was letting down its guard too early.
For one thing, while more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the pandemic’s second year, fewer of them died.
Do you remember what you were doing when you heard about Minnesota’s first case?
The new standards consider both rates of spread of COVID-19 and hospitalizations.
Or at least, stop worrying so much?
Even so, Minnesota is close to reporting its 12,000th death from the disease since the start of the pandemic.
New case rates were at levels not seen since December.
The database is intended to collect all possible reports of vaccine side effects, but in their raw form those reports are entirely unconfirmed and unvetted.
The rapid drop in cases matches a pattern seen in omicron waves in other places.
The good news is that the state makes a lot of data about the pandemic public. The bad news is that it does it in a lot of different places.
The new subvariant isn’t believed to cause more severe disease, but it may be more infectious, and experts warn it could drag out the omicron surge.
Still, as large portions of the Minnesota population — regardless of race — remain unvaccinated, officials say work needs to continue.
The omicron variant has caused such a large spike in new cases that Minnesota Department of Health staff has fallen behind confirming the deluge of positive tests submitted.