Daily Coronavirus Briefing: State leaders provide updated statistics, long-term care spread and modeling

Friday, Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) officials and state leaders discussed the spread of COVID-19 in Minnesota and addressed questions regarding the large percentage of deaths in long-term care facilities.

COVID-19 in Minnesota

Friday, MDH reported 594 new cases of COVID-19 and 28 more deaths. That now brings the total cases in the state to 5,730 and deaths to 371. The number of molecular tests increased to 4,124 on Thursday, which is driving the number of confirmed cases up, according to MDH Commissioner Jan Malcolm. That 4,124 is close to the governor’s goal of 5,000 tests per day. Nationally, cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 1 million and deaths have passed 57,000. Globally, more than 1 million people have recovered from the disease.

Malcolm broke down the demographics of the deaths. She said 24 of the 28 deaths reported Friday occurred in long-term care facilities, which followed the ongoing trend. Six of the deaths were individuals in their 90s, 10 in their 80s, five in their 70s, four in their 60s and three in their 50s.

MDH also announced that they have been working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to acquire more testing materials. The state will begin receiving 47,000 nasopharyngeal swabs for use in testing.

Spread of COVID-19 in long-term care facilities

Kris Ehresmann, director of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention and Control at MDH, spoke about the large number of deaths in Minnesota’s long-term care facilities.

Full KSTP COVID-19 coverage

While acknowledging the number of deaths at those facilities, Ehresmann stressed that the residents are generally in a heightened risk category. Given the nature of the pandemic, they would expect to see higher numbers in these facilities. In regard to how Minnesota’s number of deaths in these facilities compare to other states numbers, Ehresmann believes that they would be similar, however, not every state is doing postmortem tests to make sure COVID-19 deaths are recorded like Minnesota.

During the question and answer portion of the call, Ehresmann and Malcolm responded to concerns that some facilities may be on the brink of staffing issues. Malcolm said their team is working hard to support facilities if staffing shortages were to occur. Ehresmann acknowledged that 21 facilities in the state currently have 20 or more cases but said the increased amount of testing in facilities will continue to lead to more confirmed cases.

Another question was asked of the MDH officials regarding families wanting to take their loved ones out of long-term care facilities and what their recommendation would be in those cases. Malcolm stated that they do not recommend taking loved ones out of long-term care in general. She went on to say that the facilities themselves are not necessarily the biggest risk factor but rather the patients themselves. The patients are already generally at an increased risk and in a more fragile situation. It’s also important to keep in mind that there is a reason why residents are in these facilities; they provide specialized care that may not be possible in a home environment.

"Moving people out of a setting that has become their home can be dangerous and disruptive," said Malcolm.

It was also noted that deaths that are being counted as long-term care deaths do not all necessarily occur in the facilities themselves. Some patients are transported to acute care facilities before death but are still counted as long-term care.

Modeling, contact tracing and crisis counseling assistance

Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Joe Kelly announced that last month’s request to FEMA for a disaster declaration to assist in crisis counseling assistance is close to being approved. The approval would help individuals cope with the outbreak by providing community-based outreach and mental health services.

The University of Minnesota’s new modeling is under peer review from experts in the field, according to Malcolm. They have decided to undergo this route as MDH is interested in validity factors in the model and the divergence among different models. The peer review is leading to a slight delay in running a new model, and no specific timeframe was given for the new model.

While discussing contact tracing, Malcolm and Ehresmann emphasized the difficulty of contact tracing within a 24-hour timeframe. While ideally all contact tracing would be done in that time, that is not always possible. For instance, Ehresmann said, there are 58 different languages spoken by the employees of the JBS pork plant in Worthington. Even with translators this can make it difficult to contact trace effectively in the 24-hour time goal.