More encouraging news on Minnesota’s #COVID19 outbreak. Average positivity rate has now fallen for four straight days, and is about where this metric was two weeks ago.
Last Monday saw a week-over-week drop in the number of new #COVID19 cases found by that day’s tests for the first time in six weeks.
Even hospitalization metrics look like they might have peaked.
Now, none of this good news is a guarantee that cases and hospitalizations will continue to decline in future days. But every day of decline gives more weight to the hypothesis that MN has durably turned a corner on its #COVID19 wave.
The tentative good news on the #COVID19 front is matched by continued retreats on the vaccination front. The number of doses administered is falling, however you measure it — new first doses, newly completed vaccinations, total doses administered.
This drop in vaccination in Minnesota is driven ENTIRELY by Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which were paused last week due to rare possible side effects. Pfizer & Moderna are both up. (J&J hasn’t hit 0 yet because of reporting delays & the 7-day average.)
This fall in J&J vaccinations isn’t surprising. Even before the pause, Minnesota was on track to see its J&J allocation plummet. We can expect to see falling vaccination numbers continue for some time, based on this limited supply.
Some people have suggested that vaccination rate is falling because demand is falling, b/c most people who really want a shot already have one.

There may be some of that, & demand will eventually be the dominant factor, but I don’t see it yet. No fall in % of doses given.
Overall, more than half of MN adults, and around 40% of the MN population, have at least one dose. About 36% of adults/29% of Minnesota are fully vaccinated.
85% of MN seniors, 57% of adults 50-64, 40% of adults under 50, and 17% of 16- and 17-year-olds have at least one dose:
In fact, 16- and 17-year-olds have been the age group with the fastest vaccination growth over the past week. A lot of pent-up demand there!

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More from @dhmontgomery

18 Apr
Has Minnesota’s 3rd #COVID19 wave hit its peak? I always try to be somewhat cautious with these calls, but on Thursday MN was averaging 6.22% positivity; it’s since dropped 3 straight days to 5.97%, and has been basically flat over the past two weeks.
The rate of new cases by sample date (which lags real events by about a week, but isn’t skewed by reporting artifacts) is still rising, but you can see the rate of growth has been slowing noticably recently. And a lot of this is driven by increased testing.
If you peek ahead at the less-reliable data on cases by sample date from the past 7 days, you can see cases have risen the past 5 Mondays — but at least for now, it looks like last Monday will break that trend and show a drop for tests conducted that day.
Read 6 tweets
26 Mar
1/ So yesterday #mnleg Rep. @jeremymunson rolled out a proposal that western Minnesota should secede and join South Dakota. It’s not going to happen, but I’m a nerd, and instead of doing the dishes last night spent hours doin' math & makin’ graphics. mprnews.org/story/2021/03/…
@jeremymunson 2/ First, the basics: the 64 MN counties @jeremymunson proposes to secede have around 1.6M people. That means that South Dakota would actually be the junior partner in this merger, with fewer than 900K residents.

The denser non-seceding MN counties have just under 4M people.
3/ The seceding counties (“ex-Minnesota”) have a per-capita GDP of around $51K/person. That's poorer than either Old SD ($63K/person) or the counties that wouldn’t secede in this scenario (a whopping $76K/person).
Read 20 tweets
26 Mar
Minnesota is expanding #COVID19 vaccine eligibility next week to all adults, in anticipation of a big increase in vaccine supply. So far, MN’s been trucking along giving 40K total doses/24K first doses per day. This will likely rise, a lot, in the next week or two.
The Minnesota groups that are becoming vaccine-eligible next week number number about 1.15M people. While everyone’s eligible, some providers may still prioritize people with more risk or more essential jobs for their limited vaccine supply.
About 80% of Minnesota seniors, 1/3 of Minnesotans 50-64, 20% of adults 18-49, and a small share of 16- and 17-year-olds have at least one dose.
Read 12 tweets
25 Mar
16 newly reported #COVID19 deaths in Minnesota today, the highest in two weeks. This includes what looks like a cluster of 4 elderly Lac Qui Parle County residents.

Never overreact to any one day of data, of course. The weekly average is up to 7.5 deaths/day.
New #COVID19 cases are still rising up to an average of nearly 1,300 per day, compared to 850/day two weeks ago.
But the past two weeks have seen a rise in testing, too — perhaps back-to-school, perhaps more people with symptoms or known exposure seeking out tests. This is probably contributing a little bit to the rise in cases (but only at the margins).
Read 8 tweets
24 Mar
Minnesota’s vaccination rate remains flat at around 40,000 doses per day, but there’s good news under the hood, as the number of people with 1+ dose is trending upward — it’s just counterbalanced by a decline in people getting 2nd doses (largely deteremined 3-4 weeks ago). ImageImage
As a result, with MN now giving around 24K first doses per day, the target date for vaccinating most adults is moving up to mid-June.

And we have reason to expect a huge supply increase in the next week that will move this up even faster. Image
The vaccination rate continues to plummet for seniors (who may be close to maxed out in most parts of MN) while it’s rising for younger Minnesotans. Image
Read 7 tweets
22 Feb
Newly reported #COVID19 vaccine doses in MN dropped only slightly week-over-week today. BUT beneath these totals, amid supply disruptions cancelling vaccine appointments, *first doses* are plummeting, offset by second doses still rising.
MN has been administering far more doses than it’s received over the past week. Still no sign of overall doses meaningfully declining.
Deaths, positivity rate and cases are all pretty much flat in Minnesota, week-over-week:
Read 5 tweets

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