Officials from the state health department called it a “capacity crisis.” There were seven open pediatric beds in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region, two in the southeast, one in the northwest, and one in south-central Minnesota. There were none in the central part of the state.
This comes as Minnesota is seeing 3,000 new COVID-19 cases per week in children under the age of 12 — a group that is not yet eligible for the vaccine.
“This represents a new troubling high mark for the entire pandemic,” Jan Malcolm, commissioner at the state’s health department, told KSTP.
Minnesota was averaging 2,988 new cases per day across all age groups as of Oct. 7, representing a 36 percent increase from the previous two weeks, according to data from The New York Times.
Nationwide, children made up nearly 27 percent of weekly reported infections for the week ending Sept. 30, the most recent data available, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Neary 6 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic in the U.S.
