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Est. 2014
All tagged News Covid
Rochester Public Transit reintroduced four routes that had been suspended due to Covid-19 — bringing the bus provider closer to full service.
Olmsted County’s weekly Covid-19 case rates continue to drop, with numbers reaching their lowest totals since the start of the pandemic.
The total — 102, as of Tuesday — was updated this week to reflect deaths that occurred months earlier, but had not yet been reported to the county.
We talked with Dr. Anjali Bhagra, medical director of Mayo’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, to learn more about the Clinic’s $100 million commitment to furthering diversity and inclusion efforts on its campuses.
Britta Balko, a nurse at Mayo Clinic Hospital — St. Marys Campus, can remember the first time she walked into a room of a patient who had contracted Covid-19. It was a little more than a year ago, as the country was beginning to feel the impacts of a novel coronavirus sweeping the globe.
Rochester’s Covid-19 mask mandate is no longer in effect, city officials said Friday; however the city will continue to require face coverings at city-operated facilities.
Mayo Clinic announced Thursday that it will partner with fellow health care giant Kaiser Permanente to invest in a medical startup at the forefront of at-home medicine — forecasting a shift in the medical field that could change how hospitals provide care to some patients.
The demographic making the most headway of late is 16- and 17-year-olds, nearly 50 percent of whom have now received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which has been approved for individuals 16 and up.
After months of dealing with limited appointments and strict priority groups, vaccine supply has now reached an unprecedented point — where supply is roughly on par with community demand.
Two of the nation’s most respected names in health care are leading a campaign to encourage adults to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
The county is now averaging about 9,000 shots per week, health officials report, bringing the total of residents who have received at least one dose to 71,016 — good for 46 percent of the population.
All Minnesotans age 16 and over will be eligible to receive vaccination against Covid-19 on March 30, Gov. Tim Walz announced Friday morning. This eligibility expansion comes a month ahead of President Joe Biden’s goal of making all American adults eligible by May 1 — as the state prepares for a major uptick in vaccine supply through the spring.
While vaccination rates in Olmsted County continue to outpace state and national levels, Covid-19 cases in our area have followed the statewide trend slightly upward in recent days — ending a three-month streak of constant decline, and leading a top Mayo Clinic official to call for caution through the spring months.
Local health leaders are encouraging residents recently made eligible for a vaccine to sign up wherever they can — whether that be through the state, their provider, the public health department and/or a pharmacy — and then take the first appointment that becomes available.
All remaining Olmsted County K-12 educators and child care workers waiting to receive the vaccine should have the chance to be inoculated in the coming days, public health officials reported Tuesday.
Citing “consistently low” Covid-19 rates in the area, Mayo Clinic announced this week it will begin allowing up to two visitors per patient at its Rochester sites.
As the amount of vaccinated Olmsted County residents approaches 40,000, Public Health officials report the area’s Covid-19 case numbers have been in decline for six consecutive weeks — bringing statistics down to levels not seen since early fall, before the November case spike.
The grant, announced Tuesday, comes from a $6.9 million allocation from MDH aimed at helping public health agencies with vaccine administration.
The updated figures come as the state continues a gradual transition into the phase 1B group, which includes K-12 educators and day care staff.
The Rochester site will serve approximately 1,500 Minnesotans 65 and older in the first week of operation, according to a news release from the governor’s office. The site will be the third of its kind in Minnesota; similar programs went live in Minneapolis and Duluth last week.
