Some minor upticks in Minnesota’s #COVID19 metrics today — 5,313 cases and 9.3% daily positivity, compared to 4,131 and 7.5% a week ago. Overall the trend the past two weeks is encouraging, so there’s no reason to be concerned over one bad day.
An uptick that sustains itself for a week or so isn’t even cause for panic — last year we saw fairly mild spikes in the metrics a week or two after Thanksgiving & Christmas, but they quickly subsided.
The Thanksgiving holiday is still making our data messy. For example, this chart of new cases by sample date shows a HUGE drop. That’s because this data has a one-week lag, so last Thursday just entered the data — and far fewer people got tested last Thursday than normal. 🤔
New #COVID19 hospital admissions are down, deaths are up. (Hospitalizations lag cases by a few days, deaths tend to lag by a few weeks.)
Minnesotans over 70 have a positivity rate of around 6%. All other age groups are around 10-11% right now.
(Our October-November surge seems to have largely bypassed seniors.)
20% of Minnesotans now have a booster. 62% are fully vaccinated, and 69.1% have at least one dose.
Looking just at adults, 26% are boosted, 75% fully vaccinated, and 81% have at least one dose.
First-dose share ranged from 23.6% among newly eligible kids 5-11, to 96.2% among seniors.
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Another good news day in Minnesota’s #COVID19 reports: raw cases and positivity rate both trended down today. Our 7-day average positivity rate is now down to 8.8%.
A LOT could change, but right now it looks like we might have peaked circa Nov. 15.
That said, remember all our data is still messy due to the holidays. Case in point: deaths, which weren’t reported yesterday due to holiday staffing issues.
That meant @mnhealth reported 100 deaths today — a huge number — but that represents multiple days of data. Trend is flat
@mnhealth Deaths are actually down slightly from our peak last week, but this dataset is messy enough it’s too early to call a peak yet.
Remember yesterday when I said cases were really low, but this was due to the holiday and we should probably expect a bounceback?
Today’s the bounceback. Numbers today will look scary, but they’re not, really — it’s just a consequence of when things are reported.
Yesterday’s report had 4,511 new cases, 4.34% positive.
Today was 12,632 cases & 17.29% (!) positive.
BUT: if you take the two days together, it’s a 9.7% positivity rate, in line with recent trends. Our 7-day average positivity rate is BELOW where it was at the end of last week
As of Friday’s report, MN was averaging 4,175 new cases per day, and a 9.19% positivity rate.
Today, after yesterday’s fall and today’s rise, we’re at 3,576 cases per day and 9.05%.
Follow the general trend — smooth out the spikes and it’s one of moderate decline.
#COVID19 data is going to be very messy the next week or two because of Thanksgiving. Not only did the holiday mess up when data is REPORTED, it also messed up how the data is collected. Ordinarily MN has tens of thousands of new COVID tests conducted on a Thursday….
Also @mnhealth isn’t reporting any vaccination data today. We’ll see how my scripts handle that…
Case in point of the weird data: today’s MN #COVID19 report has more than 104,000 total tests. That’s double what we reported last Monday, but of course the holiday means it’s not apples-to-apples.
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.
#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
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.