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Minnesota Overview

Data Reporting Assessment (Learn more about data quality assessments)

Last updated

When Minnesota reports no data, several days of data, or unusual data (such as decreases in values that should increase), our volunteers note it here on the date the anomaly occurred. We also note here changes in our own methodology that affect the data.

Negative test results reported in our API and CSVs are calculated by subtracting Confirmed cases from Total PCR tests (people).

On March 4, 2021, Minnesota announced that an audit discovered 4 private labs which had not been properly reporting test results to the Minnesota Department of Health. The data for March 4, 2021, includes roughly 31,000 older test results from 3 of these labs.

On January 28, 2021, Minnesota reported a delay in hospital data for January 27th, 2021. Reporting for both dates will be available tomorrow.

On January 11, 2021, Minnesota reported that their cases were lower than they otherwise would be by 598 due to data deduplication and that 9193 test results from January 10, 2021 will be reported on January 12, 2021 instead of January 11, 2021.

On January 4, 2021, Minnesota reported more new Positive PCR tests (people) than Total PCR tests (people). As a result, Negative PCR tests (people), which is calculated as Total PCR tests (people) minus Positive PCR tests (people), decreased. Minnesota also noted during a press conference that roughly 650 of the cases reported on January 4, 2021, were a result of a backlog.

On December 25, 2020, Minnesota announced on their COVID-19 page that there would be no update to their data on December 25, 2020 due to the holiday. On January 1, 2021, they announced that there would be no update to their data on January 1, 2021 due to the holiday. Additionally, they noted that data reported on January 3, 2021, would include data for both January 1, 2021 and January 2, 2021.

On November 28, 2020 Minnesota announced on their COVID-19 page that the data reported on that day, would include data for both November 26, 2020, and November 27, 2020 due to the fact that they did not update their data on November 26, 2020 because of the Thanksgiving holiday. As a result, figures reported on November 28, 2020 include data reported during the previous 48 hour period, as opposed to the previous 24 hours.

On November 26, 2020, Minnesota announced on their COVID-19 page that there would be no update to their data on November 26, 2020 due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Because Minnesota’s data is “current as of 4 p.m. the previous day”, this change in their reporting schedule results in the data reported for November 27, 2020 being the data that would normally have been reported on November 26, 2020.

From September 27 to October 4, 2020, Minnesota did not report the current number of hospitalizations or patients in the ICU. We froze these values through October 2, 2020. On October 3, 2020, we removed the values in accordance with our policy of not carrying over current values for longer than 7 days. The values were restored on October 4, 2020.

As of September 18, 2020, Minnesota total test results are drawn from our totalTestEncountersViral field instead of calculated via positive+negative.

The number of unique people tested is available in our API as totalTestsPeopleViral.

On September 17, 2020, we switched Minnesota's specimens timeseries to Total Test Encounters (PCR) based on correspondence with the state, which revealed that their "total approximate number of completed tests" reflects individuals tested per day.