Good morning and welcome to the middle of the week. Here’s what you need to know for Wednesday. Cloudy for most of the state and windy in the metro. Twin Cities highs in the mid-50s with 10 to 50 mph winds. A chance of rain begins in the evening and gets more likely as the night goes on. Statewide, only the East will see the sun. Highs in the upper 40s to upper 50s, except near the great lake, which will be near 40. At night, colder with a chance of rain in southern and western Minnesota. More on Updraft. | Forecast
What’s on the radio today The worst of coronavirus could come next month. Gov. Tim Walz said the latest modeling suggests COVID-19 hospitalizations could peak in late May in Minnesota as the spread of coronavirus continues at a rapid pace.
However, it could come two weeks earlier or later. The governor said Minnesota must be ready sooner. "Sometime here in the next four weeks, we need to be prepared for that to be upon us," Walz said Tuesday. Here are the latest coronavirus statistics as of Tuesday:State officials have OK’d five sites for makeshift hospitals. They could accommodate about 600 beds, said Joe Kelly, the state’s emergency management director. He didn’t disclose their locations but said the goal was not to build out and stock all spaces immediately. The aim is to add 2,750 hospital beds, with 1,000 in the Twin Cities metro area.
Minnesota’s coronavirus hotspot isn’t Minneapolis or St. Paul — it’s a rural county in the south. Writes our reporter Hannah Yang: “Martin County — home to just under 20,000 residents — has become a hotspot of the coronavirus outbreak in Minnesota for its increasing number of positive cases of COVID-19. As of late Tuesday morning, the Minnesota Department of Health reported that 25 people in the county have tested positive for the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and two people have died from it.” A few major insurers are waiving coronavirus costs for patients. Cigna and Humana are waiving consumer costs for COVID-19 treatment, NPR reports, and Aetna is waiving patient costs for hospital admissions related to COVID-19.
Parents: How are the first days of distance learning going?MinnPost’s Erin Hinrichs looked into the stories of several students and their parents. “Just hearing her teacher’s voice got her excited,” one mother from Bloomington told Hinrichs. Let MPR News know how you’re doing amid the pandemic, whether it involves any distance learning or not. We’re still taking your coronavirus questions. And providing answers here.
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