4-23-2020 COVID-19 Update from MN Governor Tim Walz and MDH

MN Governor Walz and the Minnesota Department of Health COVID-19 Update for 4-23-2020

On Thursday, April 23, 2020, Governor Tim Walz joined officials from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and other state leaders to announce the next steps in Minnesota’s COVID-19 response. 

This is a summary of that news conference.

Update from Gov. Walz:

• It’s been four weeks since the stay at home order was announced
• Minnesotans doing well with complying with the stay at home order
• By staying home, Minnesotans have saved lives and bought critical time
• We’ve worked with hospitals to increase surge capacity
• We’ve partnered with Minnesota’s businesses community to purchase ventilators, PPE and supplies
• We’ve partnered with non-profits and foundations to provide critical support to Minnesotans during this trying time
• We’ve learned more about the virus and planned for what comes next 
  • Challenges Remain
    • COVID-19 has changed how we work, care for our loved ones and go to school
    • Minnesotans will continue to see infections increase and sadly, we will continue to lose friends and family to the virus
    • The pandemic has created new challenges for all of us, but especially for our neighbors who were already struggling
    • Existing racial and economic inequities have been exacerbated by this virus
    • We can’t buy every supply we need, given global demand
    • There’s no silver bullet or single solution that will get things back to normal
    • All responses to COVID-19 have trade-offs
• Objectives for moving forward
  • Minnesotans living healthy, safe and happy lives
  • Slow spread and slowly build immunity, realizing elimination is impossible
  • Protect those working on the front lines by increasing access to PPE
  • Ensure our health system can care for all those who require treatment for COVID-19 and other conditions
  • Gradually allow more Minnesotans to go back to work
  • Safely and slowly resume in-person contacts and other activities that are critical for our well-being
• “This is going to be a marathon”
• This is going to take time to build up the immunity, making sure those that can weather this, do so, and those that cannot are not put at risk
• We are in the stay at home order until May 4, nothing changes on that 
• Stay home when you can. Continue to work at home if you can. Don’t make unnecessary trips. 
• We can’t shelter in place until we get a vaccine. That’s not sustainable.
• Approach for moving forward:
  • Continue to stay at home whenever possible.
  • For settings where physical presence is critical, gradually and safely loosen restrictions starting with settings most conducive to safe practices
  • Continue to weight with very real economic impacts of every decision, and how they impact existing racial and economic inequities
  • Work toward long-term protection of at-risk populations
  • Identify and test all symptomatic people of every race, age, income and zip code
  • Isolate confirmed cases and those who have been in contact with them and expand surveillance tools 
  • For every setting that re-opens, there must be a detailed plan 
• Factors to consider when loosening restrictions:
  • Public Health Key questions
    • How does this impact the possible spread of the disease?
    • How prepared are we to test, trace and isolate those in our community who are exposed?
    • Are our hospitals prepared to treated increasing patients?
    • How does this impact public for non-COVID-19 illnesses?
  • Social Distancing Key Questions
    • Can you effectively social distance when doing this action?
    • Do we have the supplies needed to keep workers and customers safe?
    • How big is the gathering and will people be safe?
    • Are the settings predictable in how people gather and interact?
  • Societal Well-being Key Questions
    • Will this action help spur economic recovery?
    • Does this action promote the mental health and well-being of the public?
    • Does this action encourage our communities to return to civic life in a thoughtful way?
    • Does this action meaningfully improve the lives of those who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19?
• 
• Prior to loosening restrictions for a given setting
  • The State will:
    • Meet with stakeholder groups, whether business, non-profit, or other organization, to discuss unique dynamics of their environment
    • Create template preparedness plan for use by responsible entities, tailored to each setting
    • Provide opportunity for public comment on draft of those templates
  • Responsible Entities will:
    • Create a preparedness and enforcement plan; sign and certify
    • Obtain necessary supplies (e.g. masks and gloves)
    • Train and conduct health screenings of employees or volunteers
    • Instruct customers on required safety precautions
    • Effectively supervise and monitor implementation of plan
    • Create plan for closing down/sanitizing the setting if a surge of COVID-19 flares up
• “The things we love so much are going to be hard to do”
• Things will be different for quite some time
  • We’re slowly getting used to practices that we’ll continue for some time, including:
    • teleworking whenever possible
    • wearing face masks in public
    • symptom screening and temperature checks
    • maintaining physical distance from each other
    • forgoing things that we love, such as large sporting events or cultural gathering, until we can be sure they can be done safely
• Expand testing and tracing of COVID-19
  • Yesterday launched statewide strategy to expand COVID-19 testing to improve control of this epidemic and help reopen Minnesota’s economy 
    • partnership with Minnesota’s health care systems and leading research institutions
    • Test every symptomatic individual
    • Capacity to test as many as 20,000 Minnesotans per day
  • Slow the spread of the virus by making sure infected people are isolated and their contacts are quarantined and tested
  • Help to identify and respond to emerging “hotspots” of infection
  • Develop research in search of prevention or cure for COVID-19
• Distance Learning until end of School Year
  • Distance learning in MN will be extended to the end of the school year
  • Distance learning contributes to social distancing, and supports the health of Minnesota’s families
  • This is not a perfect solution, some students and families are really struggling with distance learning
  • We are aggressively pursuing opportunities to expand technology for students, guidance for teachers on how to best with students, supports for families, and more
• Tomorrow we are going to do an extensive deep-dive on what our expectations are
• To the students, thank you for doing this. 
• Limited and safe return to work before May 4
  • Currently, roughly 2.6 million people working in MN right now
  • Today’s order was developed in consultation with hundreds of businesses, labor and workers organizations, and with public health experts
  • It allows roughly 80,000 to 100,000 more employees in similar industries to safely return to work on Monday, April 27 in industrial, manufacturing and office settings
  • To re-open, these businesses must:
    • 1) Create, share and implement a COVID-19 Preparedness Plan that sets out actions they are taking to ensure social distancing, worker hygiene, and facility cleaning and disinfection necessary to keep workers safe
    • 2) Engage in health screening of employees and ensure that sick employees stay home
    • 3) Continue to work from home whenever possible
    • Visit mn.gov/deed/safework for more information
• What’s next?
  • Continue our response and recovery efforts
    • Testing, tracing and isolation
    • Buy PPE and supplies for our hospitals and others
    • Build out hospital and surge capacity
    • Protect those most at risk for the longer term
  • Monitor the virus closely and report daily to Minnesotans
  • Start turning the dial toward more re-opening using the factors and conditions discussed today
  • But be prepared to dial backward if needed based on data
  • Even as we re-open more, life won’t look the same for a while 

Update from Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm:

• Globally, 2.65 million cases of COVID-19 and 184,000 deaths
• In the U.S. 842,000 cases and 47,000 deaths
• In MN, 221 people tested positive yesterday, it’s the largest growth day-over-day so far — Minnesota is now at 2,942 lab confirmed cases
• We’re seeing the numbers grow because we’re testing more 
• 21 additional Minnesotans died of COVID-19 yesterday, most of them elderly people, residents in long-term care facilities
• 1,536 patients have been released from isolation in Minnesota

Update from Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Steve Grove:

• Since March 16, Minnesota now has 536,742 applications for unemployment insurance
• We are now above the number of unemployment insurance applications we had during the Great Recession
• Executive Order 20-40, involves the process of safely bringing people back to work
  • On April 8, the governor asked DEED and other departments to being a planning process for what the reopening of the economy would look like
  • We’ve talked to business leaders across the state 
  • We’ve assembled a panel of experts on social distancing practices 
  • The online form has taken over 4,000 suggestions from Minnesotans across the state on how to get social distancing right in the workplace
  • All of that collaborative effort led us to the plan the governor laid out earlier 
• The Executive Order allows industrial, manufacturing and office-based businesses that are not customer facing to return to work, beginning on Monday, April 27.
• We believe the executive order will allow 20,000 businesses to go back to work on Monday. That’s about 80,000 to 100,000 workers who are currently not working.
• It’s up to every business to decide whether they want to go back 
• We encourage every business to continue allowing work from home if possible
• Businesses need to develop a COVID-19 preparedness plan — there’s a template available on the MN Dept. of Labor and Industry website for businesses to create a plan.
  • We encourage businesses to work with their employees on these plans
  • The department of labor and industry will be available to help with this plan
• All employers are required to conduct health screenings of their employees upon arrival. The state is working with Target to develop this. 
• These rules are not required for businesses that are currently operating, just those that will resume on Monday.
• Customer-facing retail environments are not allowed to reopen

Update from Department of Education Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker:

• Heart is heavy with today’s announcement that distance learning will be extended through the end of the year
• We know how badly our students want to continue to have contact with their friends and their educators in their school settings
• We’re thinking ahead to this fall and the entire school year 
• Unsure about what next school year looks like 
• We are looking at all of the data being brought in and all of the evidence that students and families are bringing to us about their frustrations and challenges 
• We are looking at “recalibrating” the distance learning experience and looking at what it could look like this summer to support students and to support teaching and learning.
• “As soon as humanly possible” is when families will get an answer as to whether students can return to their schools in the fall. 
• As for whether schools should consider dropping electives and focusing on core classes… “those distance learning plans will live and die with how they are tailored to our school communities.” She says that keeping relationships with students should be at the center of any plan. “I would caution any school community about with making sort of broad decisions about core classes versus electives, because the one thing keeping a student connected to their school community may be that subject area that someone else is advocating to thin out.”
• The more a distance learning plan is designed to shape its school community, the more equitable it will be for students and their families, and the more it will maintain student relationships.
• We know that if we keep relationships at the center, there are going to be some academic standards that we’ll need to address next school fall — what got on the cutting room floor this spring, perhaps, gets woven into what next fall looks like and perhaps even the fall after that.

Additional notes from the meeting:

• Governor worries deeply about whether students are still meeting academic standards during this distance learning period. “These are decisions that will reverberate throughout a lifetime.”
• Tomorrow the governor will deep-dive more on the school announcement 
• Commissioner Malcolm says, the goal is not for every Minnesotan to be tested, the goal is to get every symptomatic Minnesotan tested promptly. Hoping to get that achieved in the next four weeks.
• Governor Walz says the State Fair falls “at the right of the dial.” He thinks it would be difficult to see the State Fair operating. It would be difficult to social distance there. It’s the worst thing for COVID-19 control. 
• Is there something the state could have done differently at the long-term care facilities that have had a lot of deaths? Malcolm said it’s certainly a challenge. It has to do with the pressures on the workforce. We think most of the spread is introduced by the health care workers coming in, and that’s just a real challenge. 
• MDH has a team from the CDC to get advice on whether there’s more the state can be doing with regards to the long-term care facilities 
• Governor says we could have done more in the long-term care facilities if the state had more PPE 
• All of the meat-processing plants in MN have received letters asking them to advise the state on the health status of their workers
• Those meat-processing plants can’t operate at the same capacity that they were
• Governor wishes Minnesota’s Muslim community a blessed Ramadan

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