Good morning. It's getting chilly out. We can expect mostly cloudy skies and a chance of showers. Temperatures will range to highs in the mid-40s to lower 50s in the north to 60s in southern Minnesota and the Twin Cities. Updraft On Tuesday, state officials announced they are ramping up plans to massively expand COVID-19 testing opportunities across Minnesota. The news served to reaffirm a point public health leaders have been making for weeks: The pandemic here is far from over.
The ramp-up includes new saliva testing sites opening in Moorhead and Winona this week and Brooklyn Park next week. The state’s already running a site in Duluth and is building out a lab in the St. Paul suburbs to process the waves of tests expected to follow.
Collectively, Minnesota will be able to process 60,000 tests per day, officials said, about twice what it’s managed on its best days to date.
Tuesday’s data extended a weeklong trend of newly confirmed cases averaging more than 1,000 a day. The seven-day average of active, confirmed cases in the state remains at a record high.
Here are Minnesota’s current COVID-19 statistics:
2,151 deaths114,574 positive cases, 102,624 2,355,124 tests, 1,600,861 people tested5.5 percent seven-day positive test rateMeet the Minneapolis ‘violence interrupters’ The city has employed community members to head off conflicts before they turn deadly. The anti-violence program is being rolled out at a time when shootings in Minneapolis are at a five-year high.
The violence interrupters focus a lot of energy on young people across the city. In the predawn hours, they simply walk the streets, keeping an eye out for unfolding conflict and de-escalating beefs. F
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett batted away Democrats’ skeptical questions Tuesday on abortion, health care and a possible disputed-election fight over transferring presidential power, insisting in a long and lively confirmation hearing she would bring no personal agenda to the court but decide cases “as they come.”
The 48-year-old appellate court judge declared her conservative views with often colloquial language, but refused many specifics. She declined to say whether she would recuse herself from any election-related cases involving President Donald Trump, who nominated her to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and is pressing to have her confirmed before the the Nov. 3 election.
MPR News will continue to carry the confirmation hearing starting at 8 a.m.
~Matt Mikus, MPR News | 