Gov. Tim Walz extends Minnesota's stay-at-home order to May 4Schools, bars and restaurants to remain closed.
By
Jeremy Olson and
Glenn Howatt Star TribuneApril 8, 2020 — 4:35
Gov. Tim Walz is extending a statewide stay-at-home order to May 4 as part of an effort to reduce or delay the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Minnesota.“We bought the time we needed,” Walz said at an afternoon news conference. “It can all go sideways very quickly if we don’t continue.”
Walz said he extended the order based on guidance from federal health officials, the experience of other states that took early action and saw good results, as well as modeling done by state and University of Minnesota researchers.
By extending the stay-at-home order, Minnesota’s peak COVID-19 caseload should get pushed back to July, giving Minnesota time to add hospital capacity, and purchase more ventilators, testing supplies and masks and other protective equipment.
“The supply issue is not going away,” said Walz.
The state will begin a process to evaluate which businesses could reopen if they can maintain social distancing, including landscaping firms or golf courses that need to do maintenance.
“It is welcome news some businesses can open up and safely resume work, even as the stay at home order is extended,” said Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R- East Gull Lake. “I will continue to share the feedback I get with the Governor as he makes these decisions.”
The initial plan had been for a two-week order that would have ended Friday, based on modeling estimates that it would reduce face-to-face contact by 80 % and exposure risks to the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. That was to be followed for another three weeks by lesser restrictions — although with continued closures of schools and dine-in restaurants — that would reduce contact by 50 %.
Under Wednesday’s action, bars and dine-in restaurants will now remain closed until the end of the stay-at-home period. They would have opened a few days earlier on May 1.
At what should be a period of exponential growth in this outbreak, health officials expected a doubling of COVID-19 cases every one or two days. Instead, that doubling is only happening every eight days.
The fatality rate has been lower than expected as well, though that is largely due to Minnesota hospitals having adequate beds and ventilators to treat severe cases so far. Initial models suggested a surge of severe cases that could overwhelm those hospitals and increase the death rate because some patients with severe respiratory symptoms wouldn’t have ventilators when needed.
The announcement came as 85 more confirmed cases and five deaths from COVID-19 were announced by the Minnesota Health Department Wednesday morning.
As the case count continues to grow, more people are requiring hospital care. There are now 135 patients at the state’s hospitals, with 64 of them in intensive care.
COVID-19 has now claimed the lives of 39 in Minnesota. A total of 1,154 have tested positive and more than half of them — 632 people — have recovered and no longer need to be isolated.
Minnesota reported its first case on March 6. Because of a testing shortage, the total number of people infected by the new coronavirus is not known.
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-ho...569473642/
