The good news in today’s #COVID19 report for MN: as I said yesterday, data issues had artificially inflated our positivity rate; today’s data sorted that out.
The bad news: we’re still (just) north of 10% and much higher than the 9.2% we were at last last week.
You can see this spike and fall as a near mirror-image of last year — off by one day, in fact. This isn’t so much seasonal patterns in Thanksgiving *infection* as seasonal patterns in Thanksgiving *reporting*.
The rest of this week will be key to figuring out where we’re headed.
That said, seasonal patterns in infections are playing a role here, too. Here’s our sample-date positivity chart (which lags by a week), also closely matching last year.
Everyone would be very grateful if we follow last year’s patterns and see case metrics plunge in the coming days and weeks. Will it? Who knows.
Hospitalizations, at least, are at a much lower level than last year’s peak. (How much of this is caused by limited bed availability is difficult to impossible to quantify.)
Deaths are worryingly comparable to last year. And remember that at this time last year, we still had weeks of rising death tolls ahead of us before this lagging metric peaked.
This surge in deaths is happening despite the fact that compared to last fall, MN has significantly mitigated #COVID19 fatalities in nursing homes.
The #COVID19 death rate *outside* of long-term care is worse than we ever saw last fall.
Something new: after months as the region of Minnesota with the lowest #COVID19 case rate per capita, Hennepin & Ramsey counties have fallen behind western Minnesota (which was hard-hit earlier). Unfortunately we don’t have good daily data on positivity rate by county.
#COVID19 case counts per capita in the Twin Cities metro are now roughly comparable to rates in Greater Minnesota.
But the (well-vaccinated) metro stil has a COVID death rate *half* of the rest of the state.
A follow-up on death rates. While the general trends I shared earlier are true, the magnitude of these trends is amplified a little bit by holiday data artifacts (0 deaths reported last Tuesday, 100 reported last Wednesday).
Minnesotans in their 30s are by far the most likely to have confirmed #COVID19 cases right now.
Here’s something new: Minnesota has its first-ever county reporting more than 90% of residents 12 or older have at least one dose. The prize goes to Olmsted County. (Though note this data has been subject to periodic revisions as people’s homes are categorized more precisely.)
More than one-quarter of 5- to 11-year-olds in Minnesota now have at least one dose, and almost 9% are now fully vaccinated.
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Remember we’re still being impacted by Thanksgiving’s aftershocks on #COVID19 reporting. Last Monday, for example, had an abnormally low positivity due to the holiday, so today’s 7-day averages will spike. But last Tuesday had a really high positivity, so they’ll fall tomorrow.
So by report date, MN’s 7-day average positivity rate spiked to over 11% today, the highest all year.
This is to a significant degree artificial, and will fall tomorrow. But even setting aside reporting issues we’re clearly in an upturn right now.
Here, for example, is positivity rate by sample date. This has a lag of up to a week, but all indications are we’re heading upward, driven by post-Thanksgiving infections.
Note this is a near-mirror of a brief spike we had LAST year right after Thanksgiving.
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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. 🤔
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.