Minnesota health department shifts to weekly COVID reporting – Duluth News Tribune

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Department of Health will

shift from daily to weekly reporting of COVID-19

case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths starting Thursday, June 30.

The company mentioned the transfer is an adaptation as demand continues to drop for laboratory-based mostly COVID-19 screenings at group testing facilities. Eight group testing websites are ending common testing this week in cities together with Bemidji and Wadena.

The reporting change can be in response to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifting its method to gauging the general public health danger posed by the virus.

“As testing behaviors have modified to embrace extra at-house testing and with the CDC COVID-19 group ranges specializing in extreme illness, native illness exercise, and associated impacts, we’re implementing extra sustainable COVID-19 surveillance and knowledge reporting efforts,” the company mentioned in an announcement.

MDH has reported COVID-19 numbers every weekday since spring 2020 when the virus was first recognized in Minnesota. Nearly 1.5 million Minnesotans have examined constructive for the virus, 66,282 have been hospitalized and 12,792 have died.

Minnesota continues to report 1000’s of latest circumstances every day, however fewer persons are dying from COVID-19 than did throughout surges of earlier variants of the virus. The present dominant omicron variant and its subvariants are usually extra contagious and fewer lethal than the delta variant, which dominated U.S. circumstances within the second half of 2021.

Daily case counts haven’t given as full of an image of group an infection ranges as fewer folks get examined for COVID-19 by way of health care suppliers or state testing websites. In the previous six months, sewage knowledge has confirmed invaluable in predicting surges of the virus and figuring out dominant strains. The University of Minnesota gives knowledge from

more than 40 wastewater treatment plants

throughout the state.

In addition to altering the reporting schedule, MDH can be rolling out a brand new web site design that options extra interactive graphs and charts. The new web site will concentrate on demise and hospitalization charges and different developments moderately than counts, the company mentioned, although downloadable knowledge can be out there for every graphic.