 | | Capitol View | | | COVID in Minnesota TODAY | |
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| This is a title | | | Welcome back to COVID in Minnesota TODAY, an email newsletter from MPR News about understanding the latest developments in Minnesota's COVID-19 outbreak. | |
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| This is a title | | In recent weeks I've complained about how Minnesota's COVID-19 metrics were hard to read — a lot of up-and-down, or conflicting metrics.
Well, as anyone who's ever met a genie has had cause to say, be careful what you wish for. The past week saw Minnesota's COVID outbreak turn conclusively in one direction: bad. Cases, positivity rate, hospitalizations and deaths all rose — and largely across different races, ages, and parts of the state.
Now, this doesn't mean we're fated to experience a repeat of last fall's brutal wave. It's possible this is an "always darkest before the dawn" moment (though that idiom is not actually accurate). All we know for sure is things are moving in the wrong direction.
More below. | |
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Three things to know
| | - Things are bad — though not as bad as we've seen them get this pandemic. How bad depends on who and where you are
- Even areas that had avoided COVID-19 surges last month are now seeing increases
- Vaccination rates remain anemic
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| This is a title | | | Newly confirmed cases are averaging just under 3,000 per day in Minnesota. That's a 31 percent increase on the nearly 2,300 cases per day we were seeing two weeks ago. | |
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| This is a title | | Even more worrisome, take positivity rate. For weeks, this metric has been flat even though cases were rising — suggesting that much of the apparent increase was actually being driven by expanded testing.
Well, our positivity rate has risen almost a full percentage point over the past week. It's now at 7.14 percent, higher than anything we saw in our Spring 2021 wave. | |
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| This is a title | | | Meanwhile, COVID-19 hospital bed use is also still rising. For a while we had some consolation that ICU bed use was at least flat, but in the last few days even that has gone up. | |
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| This is a title | | The biggest concern is not that these metrics are still rising — that's been the case for months now — but that they're rising more quickly.
We're still not seeing the drastic increases that have marked the worst part of past waves. But cases, positivity rate and hospitalizations are all rising more quickly than they were a few weeks ago. | |
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| | Last time I wrote you, the metrics painted a picture of an outbreak that was growing in some groups — such as children and residents of Greater Minnesota — but not in others.
Unfortunately, the surge over the past week has hit everywhere.
The Twin Cities metro, for example, is still doing much better than the rest of the state, but we can no longer say they've been plateaued for weeks. | |
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This is a title
| | | Similarly, after weeks where cases were rising only among children, they shot up across the board in the past week. | |
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This is a title
| | If you take the broad view, though, there's an interesting situation right now.
In the Twin Cities metro, this current COVID-19 wave has been similar to the peak of the Spring 2021 outbreak. In Greater Minnesota — all parts, from the brutalized northwestern Minnesota to the comparatively spared southeastern Minnesota — case levels far exceed Spring 2021 levels and in some cases have neared Fall 2020 levels. | |
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This is a title
| | In fact, northwestern Minnesota's recent case levels are worse than Hennepin and Ramsey counties ever saw last fall.
Similarly, cases among adults are at somewhere between one-third and one-half of levels seen during last fall's wave. For working-age adults, cases are just a bit above Spring 2021 levels. (Seniors, a heavily vaccinated group, were barely affected by the wave this spring.) But Minnesotans under 20 are seeing worse case levels than they did last fall. | |
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So when will we peak?
| | | The bottom line: Things are bad, though not as bad as we've seen them get this pandemic. How bad depends on who and where you are. | |
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Rates in the susceptible population
| | Below, I'll explore a few more stats about Minnesota's COVID-19 outbreak. If you want to learn more, I also recommend these other articles:
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| Deaths still rising | | | Minnesota is averaging nearly 18 COVID-19 deaths per day, the highest we've seen since January. | |
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Deaths still falling
| | | And because today's deaths reflect people who got sick weeks ago, we can expect this death rate to keep trending up for some time to come. | |
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Vaccinations remain flat
| | | There had been some hope that employer vaccine mandates and fear of the delta variant would combine to spur a new wave of vaccinations in Minnesota. So far, that's not really happening. | |
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COVID hospitalizations continue to fall
| | | This low-and-falling vaccination rate is true largely across the board. New vaccination rates remain low across different racial/ethnic groups and age brackets. | |
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What's happening next?
| | I'm taking next week off work, so no newsletter from me. It's possible I'll tweet occasionally about daily COVID-19 releases, but I'll try to keep those to a minimum, too.
Thanks for subscribing to this newsletter and for all of you who've sent me your feedback. As always, if you like this newsletter, please share it and the sign-up link with others who you think might enjoy it.
— David | |
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