Monday, Minnesota’s restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, gyms and other locations closed by the state’s restrictions were allowed to reopen with limits. Minnesota’s data pointed towards more control of the spread of COVID-19.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, the biggest concern was making sure those that were infected with COVID and needed medical care didn’t overwhelm hospitals and ICU’s.
Dr. David Hilden, primary care physician and an acute care hospitalist at HCMC in downtown Minneapolis, spoke to WCCO and said what they are seeing in hospitals around the state backs up the lessening of those restrictions.
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“Just yesterday we did our weekly call with people around town, and things in the metro area and in Greater Minnesota are reasonably decent this week,” Hilden told Dave Lee. “We have a spot for you if you need a bed for something that's COVID or non-COVID. Just to give some context, we had nearly 100 patients in the hospital with COVID just a couple of months ago, and half or more of the patients in the in the ICU had COVID. Which left no beds for anybody else. So the ICU’s we're full. We have about 20% of that now. So we’re in a lull in the state of Minnesota, which is really good news. And it's what we hope we can sustain through the springtime, because we're sort of looking at that end zone of the late spring to be out of the worst of this. So right now, as of this moment, we're pretty good.”
Hilden also said Minnesota is in significantly better shape that other parts of the country. Minnesota’s per capita cases are around 34.5 per 100,000 people over the last seven days according to data from the CDC. That compares to 106.6 per 100,000 in hot spots like California, Arizona, Oklahoma and Arkansas which are seeing some of the highest numbers across the U.S. Hilden tells WCCO that health care systems in those states are facing a crisis.
“I got a text message from a colleague in Orange County, California, and she said they're talking in their system about a lottery system if you are come in and who's going to get a bed and who's not,” Hilden explains. “They’re literally talking about drawing names out of the hat. So it's awful in other places of the country. So I'm very, very glad to report that we're doing reasonably well right now here in Minnesota.”
While vaccines are rolling out slower than many hoped, Hilden did say that the more research we do and the more vaccines are developed, the more effective they will be.
“We always thought that this was going to take three or four or five successful vaccines that work, different ways that can be manufactured in sufficient quantities to make sure that everybody gets one,” says Hilden who hosts WCCO’s Healthy Matters at 7:00a.m. Sunday morning.
Hilden told WCCO that eventually, the real world testing of these vaccines will make vaccinating people easier.
“Some of them require a booster shot, some don't. We'll see about the Johnson and Johnson one, about how effective it is. One of the things we use in in research about vaccines is a term called efficacy, and another is effectiveness. Efficacy simply means how many people in their trials developed antibodies and had some protection. And the current vaccines are 95% efficacious. But the real world application of that is not yet known. And the real world application means, will everybody get their second shot? Will people accept the shot? What will happen when they're going about their daily business? Will it be is effective, as the early researchers suggested? So anything that makes it easier, a single dose would be great. One that doesn't have to be deep frozen would be great. One that doesn't have side effects would be great. And so I'm hopeful about the Johnson and Johnson one and the Astra Zeneca one as well.”
