Dec. 30, 2020 Look for partly to mostly cloudy skies tonight, with patches of fog. Lows will be in the mid single digits statewide. Tomorrow will be sunny, with highs in the mid-20s, and New Year’s Eve will be chilly, with lows from 6 to 12 and partly cloudy skies. Read more on the Updraft. Vaccinations are off to a relatively slow start in Minnesota, even as vaccine doses are ramping up — with about a quarter million doses expected in the state by the end of this week. With fewer than 40,000 officially reported vaccinations, Minnesota is still giving the shots to the initial highest priority group even as other states have moved to the next phases of their plans. Kris Ehresmann, head of infectious disease for the state’s Health Department, said it wasn’t an exact comparison — as the profile of eligible populations differ in other places. "It is based on state population, and not on health care population, so you know, in Minnesota, we do have probably a larger proportion of health care workers, because we’re kind of a regional center. So that may have an impact," she said.
Also, more changes are in the works for Minnesota restaurants, as COVID-19 cases hover around 2,000 a day, less than a quarter of the peak of the pandemic in mid-November. Gov. Tim Walz's office says he plans to announce what's next for his ban on indoor eating and drinking at Minnesota restaurants and bars next week. New COVID-19 numbers continue to show a slowing pace of new infections across the state in new data from the Minnesota Department of Health. New cases just topped 2,000, slightly over the seven-day rolling average. Health officials say the growth of new cases has fallen about 70 percent since mid-November. The positivity rate for new tests rose slightly — it's up from lows during the Christmas holiday. Health officials reported 66 people died, which is the highest daily death count since late last week. You can get more of the latest news, in just a few minutes, via the Minnesota Today podcast. — Tim Nelson | MPR News |