Minnesota case growth has slowed, but health officials remain cautious

Out-of-state hotspots included Stearns County, which had 273 cases and 4 deaths, and Kandiyohi County, which had 174 cases and 4 deaths. Three more people were killed in Olmsted County, home of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

The 38 state-wide deaths reported on Tuesday were evenly divided between Metro and Greater, Minnesota. The youngest person reported to have died of illness on Tuesday was a resident of Dakota County in his thirties.

There have been 360 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 7 days.

Over 50,000 tests were reported on Tuesday.

According to the Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota hospitals are providing 1,080 more beds to COVID-19 patients than they were at the beginning of the month. This number is particularly impressive, as unused beds are not an overkill item in most hospitals. Cost reductions within the state’s healthcare system have long been striving to reduce overhead and preferred to nearly fill hospitals.

With 1,828 Minnesotas currently hospitalized for the disease and 379 hospitalized in the ICU, hospitals continue to face a surge in demand and multiple staff members are not infected with the virus. However, the surge in the number of healthcare workers attacked by COVID-19 does not necessarily mean that all healthcare systems are close to capacity.

In a phone call with the media on Tuesday, Dr. Amy Williams, director of clinical practice at the Mayo Clinic, described hundreds of staff in the medical system associated with the Mayo Clinic infected with COVID-19. She said that more than 900 cases included a wide variety of workers, many of whom did not face patients and some of whom worked from home.

With 55,000 employees in the Midwest alone, she said workers make up only 2.8% of Mayo’s staff.

“The bottom line is that it’s only a small part of our staff,” Williams said of 900 people infected with COVID-19. She repeated this off-campus while 93% of sick mayonnaise workers were exposed to community members. “One of the things we can do to help healthcare professionals is to pay attention to wearing masks, social distance and hand washing,” she said.

According to Williams, mayonnaise had 87 COVID-19 inpatients in Rochester and 27 in the ICU.

On a phone call with reporters on Tuesday, state health officials appear to have paused certain markers of spreads, but read those changes as peak marks, as some have suggested. I had a hard time emphasizing that I wasn’t ready.

This week, there were 19.4% more cases than the previously recorded 24.4% weekly jumps, and the state’s 7-day test positive rate dropped from 15.2% a week ago to 14.3%, which is now the wave. Some think it is in progress. The condition may be flat.

“We’ve seen the number of cases fluctuate daily,” said Jan Malcolm, director of state health. “I don’t think it tends to be reliable yet here. The number of cases is starting to decline, but it could be a valley between the waves, and I don’t think we’re necessarily seeing the downside of the peak. . “

Health officials also emphasized that having a test before traveling to Thanksgiving for a large family is not evidence of protection from illness.

“If I thought that having a test before my visit was a way to get people together, I would have suggested it,” said Chris Elesmann, the mayor of infectious diseases. “The test is as good as the day of the test, and it’s not a safe way to collect, so we want to discourage it.”

According to Eresman, the only scenario in which the test could safely share Turkey with non-relatives was after being quarantined for 14 days after being tested and giving a negative result.

For everyone else: “If people are trying to ignore executive orders for long-term meetings-we don’t recommend-I assume you are all potentially infectious, Always wear a mask and stay socially distant. “

Health officials are carefully waiting for results in the coming weeks, as the state has never been asked to cancel a vacation. In Mayo, two weeks after Thanksgiving, authorities are already preparing for a new surge.

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• Minnesota Ministry of Health COVID-19 Hotline: 651-201-3920.
• COVID-19 Discrimination Hotline: 833-454-0148
• Minnesota Ministry of Health COVID-19 Website: Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Website..