April 20, 2020
Cloudy north, sunny south Tuesday. Depending on where you are in Minnesota, tomorrow’s forecast will vary quite a lot. Northern Minnesota will see increasing clouds Tuesday with a chance of rain. The southern half will be sunny. Highs tomorrow will range from the upper 30s in northeastern Minnesota to the mid-60s in west-central Minnesota.
COVID-19 in Minnesota today: 2,470 cases, 143 deaths, 126 in intensive care. The latest numbers came out as Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota reported the highest number of cases per capita in Minnesota, tied with an outbreak at the JBS pork processing plant in the county. Nearly 47,000 tests have been conducted in the state, with 1,134 reported Monday - well below the 5,000 a day Gov. Tim Walz aims for. When can Minnesota businesses reopen? More info to come this week. While Gov. Walz hasn’t decided whether to replace the current stay-at-home order when it expires in early May, his administration has been working closely with business leaders in Minnesota to craft a pathway for businesses to safely reopen. Walz has laid out three key components - testing, tracing and isolating - to a safe return to workplaces. A Worthington pork plant closes due to COVID-19 outbreak among employees. The JBS pork processing plant in southwestern Minnesota has been at the center of the outbreak in the area, with more than two dozen employees testing positive for the virus. The plant is the biggest employer in the city, with around 2,000 workers, and said on Monday that it will continue to pay its employees during the indefinite closure. Far more people may have COVID-19 with no symptoms, research suggests. While that's clearly good news, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared, it also means it's impossible to know who around you may be contagious. That complicates decisions about returning to work, school and normal life. In the last week, reports of silent infections have come from a homeless shelter in Boston, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, pregnant women at a New York hospital, several European countries and California. ‘We’re going to take it day by day’: Help is on the way for Minnesota small businesses, but will they be able to survive? Most Minnesota workers work for small businesses, and they are being hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak as nonessential businesses are required to shut during the stay-home order. While $9 billion paycheck protection loans - 46,000 paychecks - have been approved for Minnesota companies, owners and workers remain unsure whether that’s enough for them to maintain their businesses. Restaurant and bar workers have been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you work in those fields and have lost your job, we want to hear from you. Share your story with us here and help inform our journalism. — Jiwon Choi, MPR News | 
