Dec. 4 COVID-19 update: 61 deaths, hospitalizations drop day-over-day
Minnesota's COVID-19 death toll has surpassed 3,800 after the state health department reported 61 more deaths in Friday's status report. That brings the number of fatal cases from the disease caused by the coronavirus to 3,845.
The health department has reported have been 267 deaths reported Monday-Friday this week. Last week there were 280 deaths reported Monday-Friday.
Friday's update included 36 more fatal cases of residents of long-term care facilities, which have accounted for 2,559 of the 3,845 total deaths.
Hospitalizations
Through Dec. 3, the number of people with COVID-19 hospitalized in Minnesota is 1,679, which is a drop from 1,770 in Thursday's report. Of those hospitalized, 367 patients were in intensive care and 1,312 are receiving non-ICU treatment.
Here's how many people with COVID-19 are in intensive care by region:
- Metro: 232
- Central: 45
- Northeast: 34
- Southeast: 28
- Northwest: 15
- South Central: 8
- West Central: 4
- Southwest: 1
Statewide, there are 106 available staffed ICU beds. You can see the breakdown by region right here/below.
- Metro: 38
- Central: 12
- Northeast: 12
- Southeast: 21
- Northwest: 4
- South Central: 2
- West Central: 8
- Southwest: 9
Note: Hospital totals are preliminary and are subject to adjustment in the days ahead.
Testing and positivity rates
The 5,371 positive results in Friday's update were from a total of 60,544 completed tests, creating a daily test positivity rate of 8.87%.
Those completed tests were from 23,544 people. People are often tested more than once, so the test positivity rate when dividing positives by people tested is 22.8% today.
The World Health Organization recommended in May that a percent positive rate (total positives divided by total completed tests) of below 5% for at least two weeks is necessary to safely reopen the economy. That 5% threshold is based on total positives divided by total tests.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota's percent positive over the past seven days is 11.25%.
Coronavirus in Minnesota by the numbers
- Total tests: 4,439,728 (up from 4,379,610)
- People tested: 2,600,356 (up from 2,576,812)
- Positive cases: 338,973 (up from 333,626)
- Deaths: 3,845 – 86 of which are "probable*" (up from 3,784)
- Active cases: 45,822 (up from 43,607)
- Patients no longer requiring isolation: 293,151 (up from 290,019)
* Probable deaths are patients who died after testing positive using the COVID-19
