Gyms, dine-in eating, youth and adult sports, and inviting people you don’t live with into your household are shut down for four weeks starting at 11:59 p.m. Friday Nov. 20.
Receptions after weddings and funerals or private parties, as well as bowling and bingo halls, are also included in what state officials are calling a “pause.”
In a video address to residents, Gov. Tim Walz said those are the settings where people are most likely to congregate closely without masks for extended periods -- and statistically are where most primary cases derive.
Walz says there is “light at the end of the tunnel” and that “sacrificing” for the four weeks will hopefully bring down hospitalizations, case positivity rate, and case growth.
“We’ve done much to prepare for PPE. We’ve done and have surge bed capacity,” Walz said. “But the one thing we have got to preserve is we have to preserve those care providers and that’s by the behaviors we exhibit.”
There is a lag between cases and how they develop and Minnesota Department of Health officials say the next several weeks will be hard to get through because the damage of current rising infection rates has been done and their effect on the health care system is inevitable. According to CDC data, Minnesota is fifth in the country in cases per 100,000 residents the last seven days.
Walz and health officials say a rampant rise in community spread in November where more than one-third of cases have no known origin is affecting health care workers. When health care workers are sick themselves or quarantining due to an exposure to COVID in the community, they’re not able to provide care to a growing number of COVID patients in the hospital and ICU, or to stroke, car accident, etc., patients.
Walz said Tuesday targeting those areas can help flatten the curve and preserve the health care system as we get closer to a vaccine.
“I understand it’s not easy and it’s not fair,” Walz said. “But it’s a sacrifice that we need to make. If we don’t do that and we continue this spread we will with absolute certainty put out hospitals at risk, as well as those who need the care and the care providers.”
Walz recently announced $10 million for small business relief, but he called on the federal government to provide stimulus funding.
“We need to have a stimulus that provides those small business owners, especially in the hospitality industry, the help they need,” Walz said. “To the workers out there who are worried about paying your rent and moratoriums on this, we need the United States congress and the current administration and the incoming administration to work together to come up with a plan to help us on this.”
Not affected by the “pause” are salons, places of worship, going outside, getting takeout, schools, and shopping, which are not connected to a large number of outbreaks.
The decision was praised by the Minnesota Nurses Association, Minnesota Hospital Association, Mayo Clinic, and the CEOs of multiple health care systems including CentraCare, Allina, Fairview Health and Essentia.
Several state Republicans as well as Minnesota’s Republican members of the congressional delegation in a joint letter expressed disappointment, concerned about its effect on small businesses.