Minnesota health officials formally detail the latest model with data on the coronavirus with side-by-side comparisons.
Officials caution that there is uncertainty and limitations, and the model will only improve with more data specific to Minnesota. The first one, what they called 1.0, came before Minnesota recorded its first death and was therefore lacking local-specific inputs. Lawmakers and residents had been calling for a look at the information for weeks.
The presentation from the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota exhibited the latest mathematical modeling data for several scenarios or courses of action.
Two included the current situation of an extended four weeks of the stay at home order for all, versus a long-term stay at home order only for the most vulnerable Minnesotans.
“In this case we have no change in mortality, but what we see is more time for the health care industry and healthcare workers who will be shouldering the demands during the peak time, pushing that peak time to July,” State Health Economist and Health Economics Program Director Stefan Gildemeister said in an online presentation Friday morning.
“If the model was the only thing you were looking at, you might say, ‘How would you weigh that cost-benefit of how much more time you’re buying?'” she said. “This is one of many data points. Another thing we are looking very closely at is what the hospitals themselves are telling us about their capacity, their confidence level in how quickly they can add capacity, and their own models, as the governor has said, are much pessimistic than this one.”
The difference between this model and the University of Washington’s highly-cited one that shows a more optimistic outlook is the Minnesota one extends beyond a year, while the Washington one goes to August.
Minnesota is also including more than one wave.
“We also need to factor into this planning and into these policy decisions whatever size this first wave turns out to be, if in this first wave not that many of us are exposed yet, that is not the end of the story.”
Read the slides and technical report below:
