Thread by @dhmontgomery

Today, @mnhealth released two days of #COVID19 data in one (data reported on 12/25 and 12/26).

But considering it’s two days of data, it’s pretty darn encouraging! New cases were only up a few hundred, and are STILL below last Sunday’s levels (which was just 1 day of data).

@mnhealth And while new cases went up a little bit over last Sunday (which again isn’t apples-to-apples), new tests went up a ton. So the positivity rate was below 3%.

For the first time since Oct. 7, Minnesota’s 7-day average positivity rate is below the key 5% cutoff.

@mnhealth Deaths were what I was worried about, as they’ve been the highest metric recently. Two days of data in one means we could have easily seen 100+ newly reported deaths. Instead, we got 40.

Now, it’s possible next week will see a lot of backlogged deaths from the long weekend.

@mnhealth So with that huge caveat that reported deaths could be artificially low because of the holiday, leading to a catchup effect next week, the 7-day average trend for new deaths dropped despite the double day of data, from 55 deaths/day yesterday to 52/day today.

@mnhealth Hospital admission rates continue to decline (but aren’t back to pre-spike levels yet):

@mnhealth Southwest Minnesota saw the highest per capita #COVID19 case levels in the spring wave, and also saw the highest levels in the fall wave.

Its spring cases were driven by meatpacking outbreaks. Not sure if the fall had a particular cause or not.