Skip to main content

Active Cases Update

By April 24, 2022Commentary

While active cases are moving up, the percentage rate of change is not alarming and it is not clear to me that we really are going to see some large wave.

Dave’s notes:

  1. Active cases are a theoretical measure of how many infectious people may be in Minnesota at any one time. Active cases are calculated as the cumulative number of positive cases minus the cumulative number of people No Longer Needing Isolation (NLNI) minus cumulative deaths. All of this data is available on the Minnesota Situation Update for COVID-19 web page https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/situation.html. All of this data is reported by date of event, so there should not be any issues with reporting lags, or mismatched dates.
  2. Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) defines No Longer Needing Isolation this way on the Situation Update web page:  “Cases no longer needing isolation represents individuals with confirmed or probable COVID-19 who no longer need to self-isolate”. MDH defines PCR test results as “Confirmed” and antigen test results as “Probable”.
  3. On 11/17/2020 we asked MDH how they determined the number of people No Longer Needing Isolation. They informed us on 11/30/2020 that people are No Longer Needing Isolation when 1). It is 10 days past the onset of illness, 2). They have been fever free for 24 hours, and 3). Their respiratory symptoms are improving. Since this reply was received we have not inquired further.
  4. Fig. 1, Active Cases: Active cases reached a recent low of 3,634 on 3/21/2022. Active cases have nearly doubled to 6,738 on 4/14/2022, the last date displayed.
  5. Fig. 2, Change in Daily Active Cases: The increase in actives cases since the 3/21/2022 low is tiny compared to past waves of Covid cases, when looking at actual cases.
  6. Fig. 3, Per Cent Change in Daily Active Cases: The percent daily change in cases appears somewhat to past waves, but the current wavelet started from a lower baseline than all the very start of Covid in March 2020.

Join the discussion One Comment

  • JT says:

    I was under the impression that the PCR Test was no longer supported as ‘accurate’ and sanctioned by the CDC as of Jan1, 2022. Yet I’m still aware of its use as a screening tool by medical establishments. What’s going on with the testing process? Not sure how you can run year over year charts made up from different testing methods … this assumes similar accuracy. Maybe it doesn’t matter because they area all bad at screening?

Leave a comment