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COVID-19
Craig Helmstetter and Elisabeth Gawthrop

COVID cases rise slowly in Minnesota

Cases are dominated by BA.2, but case rates remain low

A woman gets a vaccine shot.
Minnesota ranks 18th in COVID-19 vaccination rate, but 2nd in rate of the percentage of those who are vaxxed who’ve gotten at least one booster.
Evan Frost | MPR News 2021

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Three things to know

  1. COVID-19 continues to rise slowly, dominated by BA.2, but case rates remain very low.

  2. New hospitalizations and COVID-19 deaths remain low.

  3. Minnesota ranks 18th in COVID-19 vaccination rate (could be better!), but 2nd in rate of the percentage of those who are vaxxed who’ve gotten at least one booster (couldn’t be much better!)

The COVID-19 load in Twin Cities wastewater continues to trend up from its recent low in mid-March, but the increase is slow. Yhe Metropolitan Council is reporting a 7 day rolling average of 39 million copies per person per day as of April 4, up from roughly 20 million three weeks earlier. Remember, however, that loads peaked at 953 million on January 10th.

Metro wastewater rates shows COVID is rising slowing in the Twin Cities
Metro wastewater loads indicate that COVID-19 continues to rise slowly, dominated by BA.2, but case rates remain very low.
David Montgomery

Case positivity also remains low but continues to tick up. The Minnesota Department of Health reported 3.8% today, but the 7-day average is at 3.1%, up from 2.5% the previous Friday. Just one month ago 13.8% was the 7-day average.

The daily number of newly identified COVID-19 cases is also beginning to show a small upward climb. The 7-day average bottomed out at 373 cases statewide on March 20th, and the preliminary comparable number for Tuesday is 404. Again, this is a potential signal of things to come, as we were at 10,000 cases for most of January, and over 4,000 for most of November’s Delta peak.

We are yet to see any upward movement in hospitalizations; new COVID-19 admissions are at a very low 20 per day.

As a quick aside, it is worth noting that over the course of the pandemic Minnesota’s COVID-19 mortality rates show large disparities by race and ethnicity. As a sneak preview to the update of our Color of Coronavirus project coming early next week, the group suffering highest death rates, Indigenous Minnesotans, have a rate 3.3 times that of the group with the lowest rate, White Minnesotans.