#COVID19 metrics are all going up in MN. How much is a little harder to say. Our relative increases in today’s were less drastic than we reported last Monday. If that’s actually signs of a slowdown, that’s good. But the Veterans Day holiday could be skewing things. Wait & see.
Tests conducted last Monday in Minnesota (and thus not skewed by reporting issues) reported nearly 6,000 #COVID19 cases. That’s the most from any one day of testing here since Dec. 1, 2020. (Note this sample-date data has a one-week lag time to stabilize.)
#COVID19 death data is useless today in MN because of Veterans Day. The health department reports 0 new deaths, but that’s just because no deaths were processed on Veterans Day (and today’s report is as of 4 a.m. on Friday). Tomorrow will see a big spike, then hopefully stability
Hospitalization rates are rising briskly, though a week or two behind last November’s pace.
Cases are rising most quickly in northern central Minnesota, followed by southern Minnesota and the metro suburbs, and most slowly in Hennepin/Ramsey.
An extra week of data on breakthroughs today takes our lag to Oct. 10. (Don’t complain to me about the lag…) No changes to the relative prevalence of #COVID19 in the unvaccinated.
The next few days of data might change this, but about this time after 12-15-year-olds became eligible, their vax rate had taken off. So far we’re not seeing that explosive growth in 5-11-year-olds. Just a steady rise.
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Today’s #COVID19 report in Minnesota was always going to be bad — last Tuesday was artificially mild due to data delays; yesterday’s deaths were all reported today.
But still, this is rough. Minnesota’s average positivity rate has crossed back over 10%.
Today’s report is actually the single worst #COVID19 report we’ve ever had, with more than 10,000 new cases. BUT this report includes 3 days of data; the 9,000-case days last November were single days.
Still, our average is up sharply, and relatively closely tracking last fall.
#COVID19 hospitalizations are also rising quickly.
I wish I had good news for you, Minnesota, but #COVID19 cases are growing rapidly — at basically the pace we saw this time last year.
Positivity rate is also rising, perhaps slightly less dramatically, but still at an aggressive pace. We’re now over 9%.
Hospitalizations are also surging upward, for you “cases don’t matter” people. (They do matter, because there’s clearly still a tight statistical relationship between cases and more serious metrics like hospitalizations and deaths.)
Hospitalizations are rising everywhere, but especially rapidly in metro-area hospitals.
No end in sight for Minnesota’s latest #COVID19 surge.
Cases: up, averaging 3,600/day
Positivity: up, to 8.9%
Hospital bed use: up, to 1,125
Today’s data does include about 1,000 slightly backlogged cases from the weekend, but even if you subtract those, we’re still up significantly week-over-week.
It’s worth noting that cases ARE up more dramatically than positivity rate, indicating that a least some of our case growth may be driven by expanded testing. But positivity rate is still up 34% (or more than 2 percentage points) in the past two weeks.
Today’s #COVID19 data is gonna be extra bad, but remember that a big chunk of that was that @mnhealth didn’t get all the weekend cases processed by yesterday.
That said, this is just a one-day backlog. These cases are all happening now, whether we assign them to Tuesday or Wednesday doesn’t make much difference. Cases are still spiking drastically. So is positivity rate.
#COVID19 hospitalizations are shooting upward. They’re rising everywhere, but especially in the metro-area hospitals.
So, uh, today’s #COVID19 update from @mnhealth begins with these ominous words: "COVID-19 new case growth over this past weekend exceeded the intake capacity of our current staffing.” Up to several thousand cases not yet processed. Even w/out these, cases still up since last Tues
@mnhealth In other words: tomorrow’s report is going to be *bad*.
#COVID19 hospitalizations are rising all around the state.
@mnhealth Cases are particularly high in west-central Minnesota.
The outbreak is *relatively* mild in Hennepin/Ramsey, but still considerably elevated from where we were a month or two ago (let alone this summer).
Fasten your seatbelts, it’s a rough #COVID19 report in Minnesota today. The most cases in one single day of reporting (excluding multi-day reports) since December 2020. Positivity rate up to 7.9%, similarly the highest since last December.
And before the usual suspects jump into my replies to complain about focusing on (or even mentioning) cases as a metric, hospitalizations and deaths from #COVID19 are also at their highest rates since last December.
That said, for you pessimists looking at the calendar and worrying about *last* November, take a look at the slopes of the two lines here. Positivity rate is going up at the same time it did last fall — but at not nearly the same pace.