COVID-19 in Minnesota: Statewide, cases continue slow decline
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Statewide COVID-19 numbers in Minnesota show a similar situation as last week: cases and hospitalizations are still declining, while deaths are at a plateau.
There’s some mixed messaging on how regions within the state are faring: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded its warnings for much of the northern part of the state, but wastewater data puts southwestern counties on our watch list.
As for COVID-19 news based on age, it looks like vaccines may finally get approved for the pre-K set, while for the first time since at least fall of 2020, older Minnesotans have the highest case rates of any age group.
Statewide, cases continue slow decline
Overall, the situation hasn’t changed too much from last week. If you’re following the data directly from the health department, you may have seen a lot of new cases reported yesterday. Many of these were from last week, so it’s not necessarily indicative of a sudden new increase in cases. But, the decline in cases is not dropping off as quickly as it was headed last week.
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Our former colleague David Montgomery posted this graph this week comparing the current wave to previous ones. Although you can see the line begin to tick up for this wave, note that the value is still below zero, indicating the case numbers are still falling, just not as sharply. He notes that other waves have seen these plateaus too – spring 2021 and fall 2020 in particular.
ICU admissions continue to bounce around seven per day, while non-ICU hospitalizations have plateaued a bit after their recent decline.
And deaths have also stayed about the same, averaging about four per day.
Could other states offer a clue for what might be next here? Looking at the New York Times’ dashboard, in this wave, Minnesota’s COVID-19 cases and hospitalization trends have tracked closer to states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S. than our neighboring states (with perhaps the exception of Wisconsin). New England in particular has seen a steep decline in cases over the last two weeks, and hospitalizations there are starting to fall too. To our west and south, however, this wave may just be getting going.
Mixed messaging for the state’s regions
We have a few different metrics to try to evaluate risk in different areas of the state. First, from our department of health, we have case counts. Here’s the recent few weeks – note that these numbers are only available by reported date, so the recent dip is the result of delayed reporting over the holiday week, not an actual sudden increase.
From this figure, COVID-19 seems to be most prevalent in the northeastern part of the state, followed by the Twin Cities metro. If you squint your eyes to try to account for the reporting noise, cases seem on their way down, or at least plateauing, in most places. The southeastern part of the state has seen the biggest decrease – from a peak near 40 cases per 100,000 residents in early May to about 20 of the same measure recently.
The CDC Community Levels metric offers another look, and comparing last week to this week also reflects the decline in southeastern Minnesota. But other regional trends don’t match up so well. The CDC says community levels are high in several counties in east-central Minnesota, but there doesn’t seem to be a particular increase in cases there based on the health department’s case data.
Wastewater offers yet another look at how the virus is evolving in different Minnesota communities.
The regional wastewater analysis provided by the University of Minnesota’s Medical School shows that, as of May 18, COVID-19 levels had been steeply increasing for a month in the south-east, central, north-east, Twin Cities and south-west regions.
By the last week in that month, however, the increase had leveled off for all regions except the south-west — a region that still has the state’s second-lowest case counts, according to MDH data. The wastewater data from that region is taken from treatment plants in Nobles County, which is still registering a green on the CDC’s map, and Lyon County, which is one of the three newly yellow counties in that corner of state.
For more detail on who is included in the regions in this table, see the regional wastewater section of our COVID in Minnesota page.
Careful readers might note that this is the same timespan covered in last week's update of regional wastewater, but with somewhat different results. We have not received a response to our request for further insight on this, but in past comments the U has conveyed that this is an ongoing research project that they are continually improving.
Today’s main news from the even more detailed wastewater analysis courtesy of the Metropolitan Council and the U of M’s Genomic Center: overall COVID-19 levels measured in the Twin Cities largest wastewater plant are “essentially unchanged” over the two weeks ending on May 30. Also of note, “omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 together made up 23 percent of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Metro Plant influent, up from 11 percent a week earlier,” and are expected to soon replace BA.2.12.1 as the dominant variant.
Vaccines for young kids; case rates increase for older Minnesotans
The White House said yesterday that vaccines for kids aged six months to four years could be available as soon as June 21. The Food and Drug Administration will have to authorize it first, sometime after its June 15 advisory meeting. The CDC will also have to give approval.
While this is likely a relief for many parents, data from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows children are still at relatively low risk of getting severely ill from the virus. The percent of child cases resulting in death has dropped from 0.06 percent two years ago to 0.01 percent now. This mirrors the drop in the overall case fatality rate for the United States over the same time period, which went from about six percent to about one percent.
Still of more concern, as we touched on last week, are older people. Deaths declined slightly overall for those not in long-term care over the last week, while they have stayed elevated for those in long-term care.
The breakdown of case rates per age group also shows a relative increase in COVID among older adults. From fall 2020 until earlier this spring, the 70 plus age group often had the lowest per capita case rates, including in the recent omicron wave at the beginning of this year. For the first time, that group has now jumped to the highest.
There could be an unknowable sampling bias element with this — perhaps older folks are more likely to get tested in a way that gets officially reported compared to other age groups. But, even if that were true, this is despite the extremely high vaccination rate amongst older Minnesotans.
