COVID in slow decline across most of the state, but some 9 Minnesota counties still rated high-risk by CDC

Some good news on the broader COVID-19 front this week: the FDA approved vaccines for children age 6 months to 4 years of age, federal advisors recommended approval of a protein-based Novavax vaccine which may appeal to some who’ve resisted the mRNA-based vaccines currently in use, and a new analysis shows that April saw the lowest number of COVID deaths in the U.S. since the pandemic’s start.

Here in Minnesota, COVID-19 metrics across the board — wastewater data, cases, hospitalizations and deaths — are stable or slightly declining. But that doesn’t mean it’s declining everywhere. Nine counties, including St. Louis and Olmsted, are rated as high-risk by the CDC, meaning that masking indoors is recommended. We’ll go into these details, plus dive into some new COVID mortality data and explain why it’s important to factor in age when looking at racial disparities.

The big picture: Holding pattern persists

Statewide metrics show little change from last week. And despite some ups and downs in the data, cases, hospitalizations and deaths have overall stayed about the same in the last few weeks.

First, a look at cases. COVID-19 is on a slow decline according to the officially reported case data from the Minnesota Department of Health. Further, this trend is in agreement with the declining COVID levels we are seeing in wastewater data (more on that below.)

One important caveat to keep in mind when comparing current case rates with past years of data: there are likely many more cases now that are unreported compared to this time last year, due to the proliferation of at-home tests that go unreported.

Hospitalizations provide a better relative comparison over time. Both ICU and non-ICU admissions have stabilized and are at similar levels as they’ve been at this time the last two years. Although hospitalizations are higher than earlier this spring, they are still below where they were for the entire period of late summer 2021 through early February 2022.

Deaths have gone down a bit since a spike last week, but we don’t know if that’s the beginning of a true downturn. Compared to much of the pandemic period, deaths are still relatively low. And deaths have also stayed about the same, averaging about four per day.

Regional data: COVID down again in wastewater

Last week we highlighted the Metropolitan Council/University of Minnesota’s Genomic Center’s findings that COVID-19 levels were down by 16 percent. This week COVID levels are down by an additional 12 percent.

In addition, the Metropolitan Council is reporting that BA.4 and BA.5, highly contagious omicron subvariants, continue their ascendency and now make up 32 percent of COVID-19 material in their measurements.

According to a parallel wastewater tracking project at the University of Minnesota’s Medical School COVID levels are now down in six of the state’s seven regions. Levels are still up in the combined samples from the three treatment plants located in the northwestern counties of Beltrami, Clay and Pennington. This follows last week’s reported weekly decreases in the Twin Cities, Central and South East Minnesota.

Perhaps even more meaningful: longer-term monthly trends are down in the wastewater samples from the plants in South Central and South East Minnesota, and flat in both the Twin Cities and Central regions.

County-level data: CDC warnings up a little and down a lot

The bad news from CDC’s weekly Community Level ratings released yesterday afternoon is that nine counties are now in the high-risk category, up from five counties last week. The CDC recommends that people in these orange counties — now including Duluth’s home of St. Louis County and, once again, Rochester’s home of Olmsted County — wear masks indoors.

The good news is that the number of counties at medium risk dropped from 47 to 32. Most of the Twin Cities metro, including Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey and Washington counties, remain in the yellow, but several counties in the central and northern parts of the state have now turned green.