 | - Christine T. Nguyen | MPR News
Dec. 5, 2020
139 deaths, nearly 12,000 COVID cases over the weekend | |
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Good morning and welcome to a new week. A murky Monday is underway and it looks like we will have another warm (for December) week ahead. Snow on Friday? Find out more from Updraft.
Minnesota health officials reported 139 more COVID-19 deaths over the weekend as the overall pandemic death toll in the state is poised to surpass 4,000.
That grim milestone could come as soon as Monday, with the death toll at 3,984 and the state averaging 58 deaths a day over the past week.
Minnesota also saw nearly 12,000 more COVID-19 cases reported over the weekend, pushing the total number past 350,000.
‘I don’t wish this to anybody’: How COVID is disproportionately hitting Minnesota’s Latino community The last time Emilia Gonzalez Avalos saw her father healthy, he surprised her at her home with breakfast and a pot of coffee. It made her day.
“Then we chatted for a little bit, and he said, ‘You know, I'm feeling uneasy. … I am tired, I don’t know what’s going on,’” Gonzalez Avalos recalled.
Her father went home that November morning, and a few days passed. Then a phone call: It was her uncle, telling Gonzalez Avalos that she’d better check on her dad because he’d been coughing. She grabbed a mask and raced to his house.
“When I opened the door to his room, he was just laying on his bed,” she recounted. “His eyes have really deep dark circles. He looked very sick. And when he saw me, he tried to get up and pretend he was fine.”
But he couldn’t even get onto his feet. Gonzalez Avalos rushed him to the emergency room, despite his misgivings — he was worried about the bill. When they got to the hospital, doctors told Gonzalez Avalos her father’s oxygen level was low and that he had “COVID lungs.” On Thanksgiving Day, he took a turn for the worse and was put on a ventilator.
What to do if you test positive for the coronavirus this winter As the cooler weather takes hold, the coronavirus pandemic is blanketing the U.S. with infection rates like we've never seen.
As of early December, each day on average there are more than 200,000 new U.S. cases reported and more than 1,800 deaths from COVID-19. And although we know this illness is dangerous, the hospitalization rate is about 243 hospital stays per 100,000 infections, which means masses of people are having to manage less severe cases at home, too.
Patients are facing time alone with a notoriously unpredictable virus — and that can feel scary, confusing and overwhelming. Those are all sentiments I've heard a lot in my own practice as a family doctor lately.
If you've gotten a positive test result, here's advice from doctors about how to handle a mild to moderate, or even asymptomatic, case on your own — and when you need to seek emergency help.
-- Michael Olson, MPR News |
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