St. Cloud Area Confirms 150+ New COVID Cases Over the Weekend

(KNSI) – The St. Cloud area added 155 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend, with more than half of those cases confirmed in Stearns County alone.

In its Tuesday update, the Minnesota Department of Health reports 1,667 new COVID cases found across the state on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. (The MDH no longer updates COVID case data on weekends.) There were also four new COVID deaths confirmed on Tuesday, including a Washington County resident who was in their late 40s.

New cases in the five-county St. Cloud area:

Benton: 14
Morrison: 13
Sherburne: 20
Stearns: 80
Wright: 28

The three days’ worth of new cases were found out of 36,700 COVID tests processed between July 31st and August 2nd — the test positivity rate for that time period is 4.54 percent.

Minnesota’s latest COVID-19 Response Capacity data shows 248 people hospitalized for COVID across the state, an increase of 19 patients over Monday. Seventy-five of those patients are receiving intensive care.

At the same time, refreshed recommendations for face mask wearing from the CDC and MDH amid the spread of the Delta variant may be contributing to an increase in new COVID vaccinations. As of Sunday, nearly 3,171,000 Minnesotans have received at least their first dose of the vaccine (a boost of roughly 10,000 over the previous day’s count). Additionally, the state has officially crossed the threshold of having 3 million people fully vaccinated; 3,004,629 Minnesotans are now counted as having two doses of either the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Percent of population 12 and older receiving at least one COVID vaccine dose: