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Nationwide, emergency room visits and COVID-19-like hospitalizations have increased in recent weeks, according to data collected through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Keeley Morris, a senior epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of Health, spoke with MPR News about the fitness being tracked here around COVID.
Listen to the full verbal exchange in the audio player above.
Morris: I’ll start by saying that it’s a little tricky for us to know precisely how many infections we have in Minnesota. And the explanation for this is that only a small number of cases are reported to the Ministry of Health. We only stumble upon whether a user goes to a status quo to get tested. And at this point, many other people don’t get tested if they start to feel bad or decide to do it at home.
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But that said, we are seeing a slight increase in the number of cases reported to the Ministry of Health. We also have a low number of cases in general at this stage. But we’re starting to see that trend pick up, We have to keep an eye on the scenario just to make sure that we’re not going to have a bigger wave.
Morris: We’re surely keeping an eye on hospitalization and mortality rates. And at this stage, those signs are not trending upward, but they tend to lag by at least a few weeks compared to the accumulation of cases.
In Minnesota, we’re a little bit in other parts of the U. S. In regards to this increase in cases. As we start to see the number of cases increasing, we expect those signs to increase a little bit as well.
Morris: We have 3 types of primary variants in Minnesota, and those are also the most important variants across the country. Among our sequenced specimens, we see many KP. 2, KP. 3, and LB. 1 variants.
People may be familiar with KP. 2 and KP. 3 because they are known by the colloquial term “FLiRT variants. “This amusing call comes from a set of mutations that these variants possess and that make them more apt to evade existing immunity. Therefore, it is the immunity that other people obtain by getting vaccinated or having already had an infection.
FLiRT mutations are not new; We have already noticed them in variants. But those are mutations that are known to develop the virus’s ability to evade immunity. LB. 1 does not possess those FLiRT mutations, but it does possess mutations that give it competitive merit and allow it to evade immunity by other means.
Morris: We’re not seeing a substitution in symptoms that other people can expect from those new variants. And fortunately, they are too, at least with the data we have so far, and they do not seem more serious. The same things that other people have been observing for a long time about COVID, in addition to the symptoms you mentioned, are still relevant.
If other people think they are sick, we encourage them to get tested. In particular, when we see an increase in cases like this, we worry more about our high-risk people, who are at higher risk for severe illness and hospitalization. .
For those people, getting tested is important, because if they know they have COVID-19, they can request antiviral drugs, which do a very smart job by reducing the threat of hospitalization.
Listen to the full verbal exchange in the audio player above.