MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota surpassed 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, a grim reminder that 2021 has defied hopes and has been as deadly numerically as 2020, when the pandemic emerged.
The state reached the milestone Wednesday when the Minnesota Department of Health reported another 54 COVID-19 deaths confirmed by laboratory testing, raising the total to 10,018. Another 124 deaths were likely because of COVID-19 but weren't confirmed by testing.
"When you look at deaths in Minnesota, just imagine the Vikings stadium and taking up a section of the stadium with the number of people that have died," said Adrienne Thornton, a nurse infection preventionist at Children's Minnesota, which has lost two unvaccinated pediatric patients to COVID-19.
A pandemic wave caused by a fast-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus this fall quickened the toll in Minnesota. It took 187 days from March to September to increase from 7,000 to 8,000 deaths, but then 58 days to reach 9,000 and 39 days to reach 10,000, according to state health data.
State health officials are hopeful that an uptick in new vaccinations and booster doses has slowed the wave. Minnesota's new coronavirus infection rate has declined since Dec. 6, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and ranks seventh worst among states after being the worst in the nation for much of last month.
Sixteen doctors and front-line caregivers from the Minnesota Medical Association gathered Wednesday to urge more vaccinations and protections such as mask-wearing and social distancing during holiday gatherings to further drive down the infection rate.
Dr. Shirlee Xie, a hospitalist at Hennepin Healthcare, described in tears a text she received at 5 a.m. Wednesday from her husband, who works at another hospital: "He and his partners had just spent two hours trying to save the life of a young woman, unvaccinated, who had been hospitalized with COVID. And in the end they had to tell her family that they couldn't save her life and that she was never going to come home."
The fall 2020 pandemic wave — before the availability of COVID-19 vaccine — was harshest, increasing Minnesota's deaths from 3,000 to more than 5,000 in 31 days.
Doctors said the latest losses this fall have been frustrating because they have used up the state's intensive care capacity and could have been prevented with more COVID-19 vaccinations. They warned that care for traumatic injuries and emergency needs isn't assured right now, and that there have been preventable non-COVID deaths because of the lack of critical care space.
"Indefinitely postponing my patient's hip replacement? That's failure," said Dr. Hannah Lichtsinn, an internist with Hennepin Healthcare."The death of a veteran because an ICU bed was not available in our state? That's failure."
Minnesota's losses in just the past three months included the state's first four teenagers to die of COVID-19 as well as farmers, teachers, corrections officers and mechanics. In the past month, the state lost a former police chief, chemistry professor and an aerospace engineer.
Despite losing more people than the entire population of Detroit Lakes or Little Falls, Minnesota has the 38th lowest rate of COVID-19 mortality among states since the start of the pandemic.
Risks of COVID-19 mortality have been highest in seniors, but the age trend has shifted as more than 93% of Minnesotans 65 and older have been fully vaccinated and reduced their risks. The average age of COVID-19 deaths was 81 last year, but 75 so far this year. The share of deaths involving long-term care residents was 64% in 2020 but 35% so far in 2021.
Of the state's 133 COVID-19 deaths involving people younger than 40, 53 have occurred since the start of September.
The majority of younger COVID-19 deaths have involved people with underlying health conditions, mostly chronic diseases such as obesity and asthma but some rare conditions such as cancer and seizure disorders. However, state health officials and ICU doctors have reported an uptick in younger deaths involving no underlying health histories.
The state on Wednesday reported another 2,231 infections, raising the total to 971,667. Hospital crowding remains a key concern, as 1,645 inpatient beds in Minnesota were filled by COVID-19 patients on Tuesday.
The count includes 371 patients needing intensive care, bringing Minnesota close to its single-day record of 399 in November 2020. Between COVID and non-COVID patients, Minnesota hospitals reported that only 17 of 1,012 adult ICU beds were open on Tuesday.
Even if infections decline, health officials expect Minnesota's COVID-19 death numbers to remain high through December. Changes in COVID-19 deaths have tended to come four weeks after changes in infection numbers.
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