Health

News coverage and resources related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The Gophers have become the latest Big Ten team with a COVID-19 problem.

The surge of new COVID-19 cases that has battered the Twin Cities metro area since Christmas may have turned a corner. That’s according to an unorthodox source: the metro’s poop.

The website, COVIDTests.gov, now includes a link for Americans to order four tests per residential address, to be delivered by the Postal Service. 

The omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to spread rapidly throughout Minnesota, health care providers are swamped, and at Sanford Health, nurses are bearing the brunt of staffing challenges. Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer for Sanford Health, joined host Cathy Wurzer with more.

Hundreds of middle and high school students walked out of class on Tuesday afternoon, decrying unsafe health conditions in buildings and demanding more COVID prevention measures and testing.

Minnesota’s newest COVID-19 data remains muddled by post-holiday reporting lags, but Tuesday’s report offers reasons to be hopeful the surge in cases and hospitalizations may be ready to ebb. Deaths, however, continue to mount.

Tuesday afternoon, a number of St. Paul high school and middle school students walked out of class, demanding the city’s public school district do more to keep them safe as COVID-19 case numbers spike.

The omicron variant has added a lot of uncertainty to the trajectory of the pandemic. Dr. Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, has what he calls five pandemic stabilizers that could help.

People are paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket for COVID testing because at-home antigen kits and free appointments that offer timely results are scarce.