Good morning. Expect mostly cloudy skies with a chance of rain showers for Thursday. Highs in the upper 60s to mid 70s. But near Lake Superior, expect temperatures near 60. More on Updraft
With all those heavy topics on her plate, the state’s infectious disease director Kris Ehresmann on Wednesday also had to tell people to rethink their Halloween fun.
As she urged people to explore alternatives to traditional Halloween festivities and trick-or-treating to avoid the disease, she paused: “Man, I feel like the public health buzzkill.” She quickly corrected herself: “It’s the virus that’s the buzzkill.”
Health leaders know what they’re asking of people is an inconvenience. “But we are in a pandemic and we have to pull together to make it through,” Dr. Ruth Lynfield, the state’s epidemiologist, told reporters Wednesday.
While they remain far lower than their late-May peak, hospitalizations are back up to where they were in August when daily counts averaged more than 300.
Wednesday’s data showed current hospitalizations (303) back up above that threshold, while the count of intensive care patients (148) was the highest it’s been in a month.
Here are Minnesota’s current COVID-19 statistics:
- 1,985 deaths
- 92,100 positive cases, 83,507 off isolation
- 303 still hospitalized,148 in ICU
- 1,873,867 tests, 1,323,951 people tested
While some businesses have put growth plans on hold during the pandemic, a Native American farm took the opposite tack.
Dream of Wild Health decided to expand to feed people struggling in the pandemic and produced more than one ton of vegetables, fruit and other goods for donation to people in the Indigenous community.
It’s less than a week after Trump campaigned in Bemidji while his Democratic challenger Joe Biden appeared in and around Duluth.
Pandemic and unrest drive Minnesotans to seek firearms for safety. However, gun rights and gun safety advocates urge new owners and permit holders to follow safety precautions.
“Getting a permit to carry right now — it’s ridiculous,” said Euric Rutherford after speaking with someone from the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office. “And they tell me it’s going to take four months to turn in my paperwork.”
Whenever Rutherford is able to submit his application, he’ll become one of the thousands of Minnesotans applying for new permits this year. In Ramsey County, where Rutherford lives, the number of new applications in June, July and August rose sharply over the summer of 2019.
~Matt Mikus, MPR News @mikusmatt |
