[ad_1]
A key barometer of pandemic activity has matched a high in 2021 in Minnesota, where the positive rate of diagnostic tests has risen to 7.6% and indicates a wide spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The increase in the positivity rate is a “double concern”, with testing levels also peaking in 2021 in Minnesota, meaning more tests are detecting more infections, the Health Commissioner of the United Nations said. State, Jan Malcolm.
“With the amount of virus that exists and the amount of the population that is not protected by a vaccine, there is unfortunately a lot of room for the virus to do more harm,” she said.
The Minnesota Department of Health also reported 20 more deaths from COVID-19 and 3,661 more infections on Friday, bringing the state’s pandemic total to 8,295 deaths and 735,646 infections.
COVID-19 hospitalizations in Minnesota edged down to 871 on Thursday, but hospitals reported that more than 95% of their intensive care beds and 93% of non-ICU beds were full due to the pandemic and other unrelated medical problems.
Minnesota is above the cautious threshold of a 5% test positivity rate, but has not exceeded the 10% warning level since December – during the state’s most severe pandemic wave and just before the COVID-19 vaccine was made available. The state also hit a 7.6% rate in April before infection levels declined and prompted Minnesota leaders to withdraw mask warrants and social distancing requirements.
Health officials have encouraged unvaccinated Minnesotans to get vaccinated. More than 75% of eligible people aged 12 and over in Minnesota have received at least the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports a higher vaccination rate because it includes the doses provided in federal facilities that are not tracked by the state.
COVID-19 models from the Mayo Clinic and other groups continue to project stable or stable growth in coronavirus infections in October, with potential for a dip in November. Minnesota had the eighth-highest rate of new infections among states in the past seven days, according to CDC data, as the pandemic wave that emerged in the South this summer spread to the Upper Midwest this autumn.
Malcolm said hospitals and public health officials are hoping for a peak in the latest wave but must predict the possibility of a growth in infections due to a rapidly spreading delta variant of the virus.
“This wave was different from previous waves in that we haven’t seen the big increase, this exponential rate of growth that we’ve seen in some of the other waves,” she said. “But it’s this constant, inexorable increase over a long period of time… We know it won’t be the same pattern we’ve seen before because it’s already different.
Jeremy Olson • 612-673-7744
[ad_2]
Source link