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The COVID-19 pandemic upended life in Minnesota and across the country in March 2020. School buildings closed and businesses were shuttered as the economy convulsed. Hospitals nearly reached their breaking point as deaths and hospitalizations leaped. 

Five charts show different ways in which the pandemic shaped us.

1) Hospital admissions: 104,493 and counting

, the state’s first hospital admission for COVID-19 occurred on Feb. 29, 2020. Four more followed before Gov. Tim Walz declared a 

By the end of March 2020, 178 Minnesotans had already been hospitalized due to COVID — a number that would climb to 26,568 hospitalizations by the end of the first 12 months of the pandemic.

That was not the pandemic’s peak year, however, with the state seeing another 34,797 COVID-related hospital admissions during year two (March 13, 2021 to March 12, 2022). Year three saw one-third fewer hospitalizations (22,668). They fell by nearly half in year four (12,018).  

So far there have been 8,442 COVID-19 hospitalizations in year five.  

The day with the highest number of COVID-19 hospital admissions to date was 

Older adults were most severely affected. The cumulative total hospitalizations for Minnesotans is 19 per 1,000 overall, but there were 95 per 1,000 Minnesotans aged 75 or older.  By contrast, children from birth to age 17 had three hospitalizations per 1,000.

The first death from COVID-19 in Minnesotan was 

, six days after the state of emergency was declared. During the first 12 months of the pandemic, a total of 7,057 Minnesotans died due at least partly to COVID-19 according to 

On Dec. 3, 2020, 87 Minnesotans died due to COVID-19. It would be the deadliest day in the pandemic.

Unlike hospitalizations, COVID-19 mortality began declining in the second year, by 24 percent. COVID-19 mortality declined by another 60 percent in year three, and then was cut by another third in Minnesota during the fourth year of the pandemic.  

With just a couple weeks’ worth of death records still to be processed for the period through early March, 755 Minnesotans have died due to COVID-19 in year five. The number is now about one-tenth of what we experienced in the first year of the pandemic. 

Then the battle against COVID-19 became personal

In Minnesota as elsewhere, the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on certain racial and ethnic groups. For example, 

through our last comprehensive analysis of the data in Oct. 2023

, age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality rates (deaths per 100,000) in Minnesota were highest among American Indians (778) and lowest among whites (252), with Black Americans (453), Asian Americans (399), and Latino Americans (379) falling in between. 

The pandemic had a dramatic impact on the global economy almost from the beginning.

Immediately prior to the pandemic there were just under 3 million jobs in Minnesota. By April, the state was reporting only 2.6 million jobs, or a loss of more than 13 percent of all payroll jobs in just one month. The unemployment rate jumped from 3.6 percent in March to the highest point of 11.2 percent in May. 

The state turned things around relatively quickly, clawing back more than half of the lost jobs by October 2020. The next half of the job recovery came more slowly, however, with the job count not returning to its pre-pandemic level until June 2023.   

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development

 reports the state’s most recent job count as well over 3 million in December. This exceeds the pre-pandemic job count by more than 46,000, and the unemployment rate is back down to a relatively low 3.3 percent. 

In Minnesota, like many states, schools were shut down as a part of the emergency response to the pandemic. The closure — 

originally scheduled for less than two weeks

 — eventually morphed into mandatory remote learning. 

, schools gradually returned to in-person learning often combined with remote learning options.  

The upheaval took a toll on students (and parents) throughout the state. The main uniform means of measuring learning, the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment exams, were suspended for the 2019-2020 school year. When they returned, the exams showed steep declines. For example:

Results for the 2024-25 school year have yet to be released, but 

, the 2023-24 numbers showed little improvement.

Wastewater testing is a new-to-most-of-us data source that became an essential way to track infection levels. Hospitalization and mortality data were vital, but they were lagging indicators; people typically become hospitalized several days after exposure and death certificates take even longer to process.

In addition, reporting on the number of diagnosed COVID-19 cases was imprecise. People had to make appointments or go to testing locations. The advent of at-home tests further limited the ability of public health officials to track the numbers of cases.

, eventually latched on to the idea that tests could be run on wastewater samples. These tests did not require individuals to act or doctors to file reports. 

Over succeeding waves of the pandemic, they showed changes in COVID-19 activity levels.

Wastewater monitoring has so far proven to be a good, if imperfect, indicator of COVID-19 activity. For example, some strains of COVID-19 have been less likely to lead to hospitalization or death than others. 

Still, the method could possibly help monitor and respond to a wide number of health concerns, ranging from widespread drug use to the spread of other infectious diseases.  

Minnesota News

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Craig Helmstetter

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The COVID-19 pandemic upended life in Minnesota and across the country in March 2020. Schools and businesses closed. Hospitals nearly reached a breaking point as deaths and hospitalizations leaped. Five charts show different ways in which the pandemic shaped us.

COVID in Minnesota: Five years in five graphs

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