May 13, 2020
Welcome back, spring! Showers today will linger into this evening, but the wet and chilly air today is going away, bringing the spring warmth and sunshine back in Minnesota tomorrow. Eastern Minnesota may see some lingering showers tomorrow. Highs Thursday will range from the upper 60s to the mid-70s. Latest on COVID-19 in MN: Walz ready to end stay-home order, keep dine-out ban. Gov. Tim Walz’s peacetime emergency order is set to expire today and the current stay-home order to expire next Monday. Walz will let his stay-at-home order expire as planned on Sunday night, according to multiple people briefed on the governor’s plans. Walz will discuss his decision and plans during a 6 p.m. address to Minnesotans.Listen live tonight on MPR News.The total number of cases since the pandemic began approached 13,000, and the state’s COVID-19 death toll hit 638 on Wednesday. 110,000 dead by June 6 in the U.S., models project. As of Wednesday, more than 83,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19. Scientists have built dozens of computational models to answer how many more lives will be lost, and the projections vary substantially — with the most pessimistic forecasting a total death toll of 120,000 by June 6 and the most optimistic forecasting 103,000 deaths by that date. But the models have been inching closer to each other. Loosening restrictions result in case upticks in China and South Korea. The two countries were believed to have been successfully containing the virus. Recently, however, they started to see new cases emerging as social distancing restrictions and lockdown measures got loosened after days of no new cases confirmed. Have questions about COVID-19 and its impact? Share them with us here. — Jiwon Choi and Sara Porter, MPR News | 