REGIONAL- While St. Louis County continues to average about two dozen new COVID cases a day, according to the seven-day case average, for the time being North Country residents can point to their neighbors to the south as the source.
For the first time since mid-July 2021, last week’s state report for the six zip codes monitored by the Timberjay showed only two new cases, both in Embarrass. The report also brought to an end the region’s longest streak of consecutive weeks with new cases, also dating back to last July, as none were recorded for Ely in the April 14 report.
The numbers are consistent with those on the county’s COVID dashboard of regional cases per 100,000 people, which ,due to reporting and verification practices, lags by a couple of weeks. Between March 20 and April 3, that rate in the Duluth area rose from 94 to 110.7. The northern part of the county went in the opposite direction, starting at 61 on March 20 and dropping to 31 by April 3.
Statewide case numbers reported by the Minnesota Department of Health show a moderate week to week increase, with the average of 724 new cases per day between April 13 and April 19 about 40 percent higher than the average of 513 cases per day the prior week.
“We have seen an uptick in cases over the last couple of weeks, but I’m happy to say those increases have been fairly moderate,” Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm told Minnesota Public Radio on Monday. “We’re not seeing the kind of rapid, almost vertical increase in cases that we saw in December. We’re watching it very closely, but so far we’re feeling a little more comfortable with what’s going on. As of last week, we had three southern border counties that were in the moderate community spread range, but the rest of the state was in low risk.”
As of Thursday, April 14, the COVID data tracker map maintained by the Centers for Disease Control showed all Minnesota counties in green, indicating low community levels. North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa had pockets of medium COVID levels, with additional such areas stretching southward through the Midwest into Texas. The highest concentrations of COVID cases were in the New England states, with over half of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire showing moderate levels and over half of New York experiencing moderate to high levels of community spread.
But with cases going up again in 34 states, driven largely by the highly contagious BA.2 Omicron subvariant, Minnesota may soon see its case count increase more widely.
The Mayo Clinic’s COVID status and forecasting map doesn’t use the same terminology or data calculations as the CDC’s COVID tracker, but across the next two weeks it predicts case rates per 100,000 people rising in both the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota.
St. Louis County is not one of the counties projected to see an increase by May 1, but the projections show movement in this direction with newly elevated levels in Cass and Kanabec counties. As St. Louis County has been among the last counties in the state to experience prior case surges, cases may well tick upward here within a few weeks.
“It’s pretty clear now that COVID, or SARS-CoV-2, is not going to go away, we’re going to be dealing with it as a recurring virus,” Malcolm said. “With so much transmission still happening around the world and over a million cases a day globally, it’s a lot of opportunity for the virus to spin off these variants. The way to keep it manageable, is to keep it from causing such huge disruption and damage to health, is to get vaccinated, staying up to date. And, also, making sure testing is robust so that people know their status and can take appropriate preventive actions.”