Dakota County COVID Cases Down On Pandemic's 2-Year Anniversary

HASTINGS, MN —On the two-year anniversary of the World Health Organization first characterizing COVID-19 as a pandemic, the COVID metrics in Dakota County continue to trend in the right direction.

On Friday, Dakota County released its weekly COVID-19 statistics for the previous seven days, and confirmed cases, hospitalizations and deaths all were down from the previous week's report.

According to Dakota County, there were 440 confirmed cases reported in the seven days prior to Friday, which is down from 449 the previous week.

The 20 COVID-related hospitalizations reported this past week are down from 26 when statistics last were reported on March 4.

After reporting 14 deaths from COVID during the week leading up to March 4, Dakota County reported three deaths this week.

The county also reported that there were 16 adult and 5 pediatric Metro staff ICU beds available as of Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also continues to classify Dakota County in the low category on its community levels tool.

As of Thursday, much of the state, and the Twin Cities metro area, remained classified as low.

However, Rice County was the only county in Minnesota that remained classified as having high community levels of COVID-19.

Counties in Minnesota classified as having medium levels of spread are: Steele, Dodge, Olmsted, Wabasha, Winona, Filmore, Mower, Freeborn, Faribault, Martin, Pope, Traverse, Big Stone and Beltrami.

All other counties are considered low.

On March 1, Dakota County dropped its mandate requiring that masks be worn in county buildings, citing declining COVID-19 cases and other local indicators.

The decision to reverse the mandate was made at a Dakota County Board meeting on Feb. 22.

More information on COVID-19 in Dakota County is available here.