| July 20, 2020 Cooler, wet and stormy Tuesday -- and the rest of this week. There’s no heat wave in sight, but instead, we’ll have cloudy and stormy days this week. And tomorrow is no exception: A chance of rain and thunderstorms with highs in the mid-60s to the upper 70s across Minnesota. Four tornadoes touched down in Minnesota over the weekend. Two of them occurred along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border near the Twin Cities metro area Saturday night. The other two were in central Minnesota, north of the metro. The twisters did some damage but fortunately caused no reported injuries. For the first time since the pandemic, 900-plus new cases reported in Minnesota today. The new mark is nearly 100 cases higher than in late May when there were up to 840 new cases confirmed a day. And unlike other increases, Monday’s case count rose significantly despite a 17 percent drop in daily tests from the previous day. Patterns in Monday’s data reflect what’s been happening for three weeks now: New case counts leap as deaths and hospitalizations flatten -- with four more deaths reported and 247 Minnesotans currently hospitalized. Another grim first today: 9-month-old dies of COVID-19 in Minnesota. It’s the state’s first death of a child. State health officials said the Clay County child didn’t have any underlying health condition and is among the youngest deaths recorded in the country from COVID-19. The state has asked the CDC to do some additional investigation and analysis, officials said. Racial disparities driven by COVID-19 go beyond health issues. People of color take a bigger economic toll than white. That’s according to data compiled by ProPublica, which show much higher unemployment rates for people of color than white people. For young Black workers, who already had a high unemployment rate before the pandemic, the situation has gotten even worse, with almost 1 in 3 unemployed since the pandemic began. — Jiwon Choi, MPR News | @ChoiGEE1 | 