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Phil Roeder via Flickr
In the first 236 days of the coronavirus pandemic in Minnesota, the state health department has reported more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 in a single day on three occasions.
That period, between March 6 and October 28, saw a total of 139,444 cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus in Minnesota. Since then, the state has reported 143,472 additional cases for a total of 282,916 through November 24.
It’s a 26-day sprint in the wrong direction with an average of 5,518 cases per day, including six days in the past two weeks with at least 7,000 cases. Cases appear to have stabilized since they hit a one-day high of 8,689 cases on November 14, but what does this mean?
“It has been 10 days now since we had our highest number of cases on record,” said Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm.
“We have seen the number of our cases fluctuate from day to day. We would not consider that we still have some kind of reliable trend,” she said. “While we’ve been delighted to see a bit lower number of cases in recent days, we believe this could be another of those patterns we saw earlier in the outbreak – a series of waves, and may -being we are hollow now between the waves. ”
Malcolm said health officials “don’t necessarily think what we’re seeing in recent days is the downside of a spike.”
A “bright spot”, however, is that Malcolm says the state’s test positivity rate declined week-over-week, from 15.2% positive a week ago to 14.3 % in the last seven days. The World Health Organization said in May that any positive result above 5% indicates substantial community transmission of the virus.
But even as the number of cases stabilizes, the high numbers seen in recent weeks are putting increasing pressure on state hospitals as new cases are usually followed by hospitalizations and then death.
“While we’ve seen that some of our cases count a little less lately, hospital admissions haven’t,” said Malcolm.
There were 1,828 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Minnesota until November 23, including 379 people in intensive care. These have been high marks since the start of the pandemic, and 1,080 more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than there were at the start of November.
Health officials continue to stress the importance of curling up during Gov. Tim Walz’s executive order banning social gatherings, indoors and outdoors, with anyone outside your immediate home. This includes Thanksgiving meetings.
The governor’s decree will expire on December 18, when – unless the order is extended – social gatherings would be allowed again.
During the decree, anyone with symptoms of COVID-19 – cough, shortness of breath, fever, chills, headache, muscle pain, sore throat, loss of taste or smell – should get tested.
If you have mild symptoms, the preferred method of testing is to order the at-home saliva kit, although statewide facilities remain available for in-person testing. If you have moderate or severe symptoms, avoid visiting a community testing site and instead call your doctor or go to the hospital.
If you have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, you should get tested at least five days after the last time you were close to someone with COVID-19. Testing too early can create a false negative. Regardless of the test result or symptoms, people who have been exposed are advised to self-quarantine for 14 days after last contact with someone with COVID-19.
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