COVID-19 death toll in Minnesota reaches 15,000

Minnesota has lost 15,000 people to COVID-19, a number bigger than the population of Brainerd, in a sobering marker in the state’s 3½-year struggle with a lingering infectious disease.

The 274 days since the last 1,000 milestone is the longest in the COVID era, reflecting the diminished risk of a coronavirus that has evolved into less virulent forms. It only took 14 days to surge from 4,000 to 5,000 COVID deaths in December 2020, before vaccine was widely available.

Infectious disease experts said the latest number is nonetheless a reminder of the need to take precautions, even now, including newly formulated vaccine boosters that better protect against the latest coronavirus variants. Minnesota’s weekly update on Thursday reported exactly 15,000 deaths in which COVID was lab-confirmed, along with another 466 in which COVID was referenced in death certificates but not confirmed.

“All of us know someone who has died from COVID in Minnesota,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “It’s our grandpas and our grandmas, our moms and our dads, our brothers and our sisters and … even our kids. That’s what is to be remembered in the 15,000.”

More than two Minnesotans are dying every day from COVID right now, an increase from one every four days at one point this summer. The 231 hospitalizations related to COVID on Tuesday also were the highest since early April and an increase from 41 on July 3.

Still, the latest figures bring Minnesota back to spring 2023 levels of COVID, which were low enough to prompt federal health authorities to lift the nation’s public health emergency response to the pandemic.

Health officials haven’t forecasted a wintertime surge akin to 2020 or 2021, but they remain concerned because each new variant brings uncertainty and at least the possibility of more severe illness. The XBB.1.5 variant was dominant for several months in 2023 when COVID was at its mildest, but sampling of positive specimens found it in only 9% of cases by late August.

While the latest COVID vaccine boosters were formulated against XBB.1.5, federal authorities authorized them based on data indicating they would work against the newly circulating strains.

This is a developing story.