(FOX 9) - Nearly 700,000 Minnesotans have now received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, the Minnesota Department of Health reported Wednesday.
As of Feb. 15, 695,629 people in Minnesota have received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccine series and 246,431 are fully vaccinated, which is 12.5% and 4.4% of the state’s population respectively. MDH’s vaccine reporting lags by a few days.
At least 315,018 Minnesota seniors have received at least their first dose of the vaccine, or 36.7% of the state’s age 65 and older population.
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Jewelean Jackson, the former board chair of the Community-University Health Care Center, documented her experience getting her second dose of the vaccine on Friday.
MDH reported 783 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday out of 22,160 tests—a 3.5% positivity rate. Over the last seven days, Minnesota has averaged 794 new COVID-19 cases a day.
There have now been 475,379 COVID-19 cases confirmed in Minnesota since the first infection was reported in the state last March. Over 97% of Minnesota’s COVID-19 cases have recovered to the point where the infected person no longer needs to be isolated from others.
Ten more people in Minnesota have died from COVID-19, according to the latest MDH data.
Half of the deaths reported on Wednesday were in the Twin Cities metro. Three of the 10 deaths were in long-term care or assisted living facilities. To date, nearly two-thirds of the Minnesotans who have died from COVID-19 lived in long-term care or assisted living facilities.
The newly reported deaths were all people between the ages of 50 and 89.
To date, 6,390 Minnesotans have died from COVID-19.
There are currently 314 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Minnesota, 54 of whom are in the ICU. That is the lowest number of COVID-19 ICU patients the state has reported since MDH began tracking that metric in early June.