Good morning. Some parts of Minnesota could be seeing its first signs of winter this weekend. Northern Minnesota will be the primary recipients of accumulating snow this Saturday and Saturday night. And brace for cooler temps in the 30s to 50s, from north to south respectively. Updraft Our week of demoralizing COVID-19 data continues. Nineteen more deaths were reported Thursday, following 29 on Wednesday — marking the worst two-day total for the state since early June.
Active, confirmed cases of the disease have topped 10,000 with the state still stuck in a weeklong trend of new cases averaging more than 1,000 a day. Because many of the new cases are believed to stem from smaller, everyday gatherings, health officials say it has been harder to trace and isolate cases.
The advice remains the same: Social distance, wear a mask, wash your hands and if you feel sick, absolutely stay home.
Here are Minnesota’s current COVID-19 statistics:
- 2,199 deaths
- 117,106 positive cases, 104,547 off isolation
- 2,403,811 tests, 1,623,276 people tested
- 5.4 percent seven-day positive test rate
There has also been a significant drop in parents in enrolling their young children in kindergarten — instead deciding to wait a year or send them to day care.
And it's not just the metro, districts in greater Minnesota have also seen students withdraw. “I don’t think we’ve ever had the degree of uncertainty that we’ve had this year because of COVID-19. This is all new territory,” said Kirk Schneidawind, executive director of the Minnesota School Boards Association.
Minnesota's jobless rate fell to 6 percent last month, from 7.4 percent. It sounds like good news, but that decrease was due mostly to a significant dip in the number of people seeking work, state officials said Thursday. At 68.4 percent, Minnesota’s workforce participation rate is still higher than the 61.4 percent for the nation, “but you never want to see that rate go down, especially at a time when there are a lot of firms hiring,” said Steve Grove, commissioner of the Department of Employment and Economic Development
~Sara Porter, MPR News | 
