April 30, 2021 We're heading into a beautiful weekend. Much of Minnesota will have Saturday highs in the 70s and 60s. Saturday afternoon will be breezy in the eastern half of the state. Sunday highs will be in the 70s in roughly the southern third of Minnesota, with mainly 60s and 50s to the north. Get the latest on Updraft. Active COVID-19 cases are trending down as Gov. Walz eyes a "close to normal" State Fair. The overall trends in the state's COVID-19 data look solid following a rising caseload wave in early April, enough so that Walz in coming days is expected to loosen some curbs on public gathering spaces. "There’s probably only a couple turns left,” on the state’s reopening dial, Walz said Friday. He predicted the Minnesota State Fair in August would be “a pretty close to normal event" this year after COVID-19 canceled it in 2020. The count of known, active cases came in at 15,638 in Friday’s numbers. The seven-day trend line is at its lowest point in more than three weeks. Hospitalizations had been climbing the past few weeks, hovering at levels not seen since January. Sixteen deaths reported Friday brought Minnesota’s pandemic toll to 7,144. Minnesota rental assistance program to soon begin payouts. A new online initiative is aimed at helping Minnesota renters who have fallen behind on making payments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new emergency rental assistance program, called RentHelpMN, will make use of $375 million in COVID-19 relief money that Minnesota received from the federal government. So far, applications are coming in, but no payments have gone out, and a trade group representing rental property owners criticized the rollout of the online system. Subscribe to our Minnesota Today podcast to get the up-to-date Minnesota news twice daily. — MPR News Staff |