Minnesota’s stay-at-home order is extended for a few more weeks, but that period will also see rollbacks of restrictions that for more than a month created an unsteady new normal that’s been both financially painful and socially frustrating.
“We’re not frozen in time, we’re going to continue to turn the dials,” Gov. Tim Walz told Dave Lee on the WCCO Morning News on Friday.
“There has to be a middle ground to sustain this because we have to go on until we get either therapeutics or a vaccine,” said Walz. “Keeping this many people out of the workplace is not acceptable. What we’re learning day-by-day is, there’s new ways to do this.”
The stay-at-home order, put into place March 27 and extended now until May 18, was geared to flattening the curve of the coronavirus outbreak, slowing the rise to the peak and allowing overwhelmed hospitals to catch up on staffing clinics, testing patients, and stocking up on personal protective equipment.
“Our hospitals and the folks in and out of state government have, I think, created a surge capacity that’s acceptable now,” Walz said. “If (anyone) gets sick, and needed that emergency care, it’s available all across Minnesota. Again, I think Minnesotans have done everything that’s asked of them.”
Walz had set a goal of performing 5,000 daily coronavirus tests in Minnesota by May 4. He announced on WCCO radio that on Thursday, April 30, more than 4,200 tests were done in the state.
“That puts us testing in probably a higher rate than probably any place outside of New York City,” he said.
Walz said reopening of more small businesses such as hair salons might happen before the stay-at-home order expires.
“Yes, and here’s what I get, and I hear this loud and clear: people say just give us a date,” he said. “It’s just simply not that simple. This changes so quickly.”
Nobels County is an example.
Located in far southwestern Minnesota with a population of fewer than 25,000, Nobels reported its first laboratory-confirmed coronavirus case on April 10. The number now is 742, second to only the 1,738 reported by Hennepin County, Minnesota’s most populous.
This all comes after dozens of workers at the JBS pork processing plant in Worthington contracted COVID-19, leading the facility’s closure.
“I think you’ll see, probably by Monday, an announcement on that,” Walz said, noting that restarting elective surgeries will bring back needed revenues to health care facilities that’s been lagging enough that layoffs and furloughs were necessary to remain viable.
It’ll also allow Minnesotans who’ve needed surgery to get the treatment they need to alleviate non-lethal conditions.