“This spread is Delta. It is all Delta,” Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm told reporters on Thursday, adding that no new cases of the Omicron variant have been detected in the state since last week’s initial case.
Last week, Minnesota reported its first case of the new COVID-19 variant in a Hennepin County man who recently returned from a 53,000-person anime convention in New York City. The man was vaccinated and has since recovered from mild symptoms.
While the state’s confirmed count of Omicron remains at one, hospitalizations reached 1,653 on Wednesday—the highest figure recorded in 2021.
Nearly 98 percent of ICU beds and 95 percent of overflow hospital beds are occupied in Minnesota, according to the state’s Department of Health. More than 80 percent of the state’s hospitals have reached capacity.
Unvaccinated people make up the majority of hospitalizations. State health officials are warning the trend will continue amid Minnesota’s fourth COVID-19 wave.
Malcolm said there is “danger for unvaccinated people—It’s probably never been as high as it is right now.”
As of Tuesday, more than 70 percent of Minnesotans aged 5 and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 65.7 percent are fully vaccinated.
Health officials are continuing to urge the remaining 1.3 million eligible Minnesota residents who are unvaccinated to get their shots while also encouraging those who have already been immunized to receive booster shots.
As the state with the second-highest number of people with booster shots, nearly 40 percent of fully vaccinated Minnesotans have received a booster dose.
The state’s genomic sequencing has found that almost all of the infections detected in the fall were of the highly-contagious Delta variant. The Delta variant has been linked to more severe illness and early studies suggest it is more resistant to the vaccines.
Little remains known about the Omicron variant, but preliminary data indicate that it is likely to be just as transmissible as Delta.
Despite Omicron’s rapid spread, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said this week that the new variant is “almost certainly” not more severe than Delta.
Although only one case of the Omicron variant has been detected in Minnesota, federal health officials are using the outbreak at the three-day anime convention to provide insight into how the variant will spread domestically.
“Data from this investigation will likely provide some of the earliest looks in this country on the transmissibility of variant,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday.
The CDC has contacted over 35,000 of the 53,000 attendees.
