Oct. 6, 2020
Glorious fall day tomorrow. Tonight, look for partly cloudy skies, with a chance of rain showers far north in the evening. Lows will be in the lower 40s to lower 50s. Tomorrow will be sunny with highs in the lower 60s to lower 70s across Minnesota, but in the 50s to the far north. Despite testing drop, record-high COVID-19 case trend continues today. Testing was down significantly in Tuesday's report, but another nearly 1,000 new cases were identified, making for a 7.2 percent positivity rate. It’s a key metric watched by health experts, who say they’re troubled by any numbers over 5 percent, although a single day’s number isn’t necessarily cause for alarm.
The state Health Department also reported four additional deaths Tuesday and hospitalizations continued to fall from the weekend.
Northern Minnesota in the center of recent case spikes. Northern Minnesota, once by far the region least affected by the disease, has over the last week averaged the most cases per capita.
Beltrami County in northern Minnesota is seeing a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases, several weeks after a campaign rally President Trump held at the Bemidji airport. In the last week alone, the county saw 103 new cases — out of a total just over 500, since the pandemic began in March.
Two U of M faculty awarded MacArthur "genius grants." Paul Dauenhauer is a chemical engineer developing new technologies for converting biomass into the chemical building blocks that could eventually replace fossil fuels. Damien Fair researches brain development and directs the U’s Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain. Both Fair and Dauenhauer get more than half a million dollars each to pursue their research, no strings attached, over the next five years.
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