Minnesota’s 4th, 5th COVID-19 cases surface in Olmsted, Ramsey counties
Published 6:48 pm Wednesday, March 11, 2020
- This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control
By Peter Cox
Minnesota now has its fourth and fifth cases of COVID-19, with the patients in Olmsted and Ramsey counties recovering at home, state health officials said Wednesday.
Both cases have international travel history. The Ramsey case is a person in their 30s. Health officials say that person has had no community contact outside their home.
The Olmsted case involves a person in their 50s who may have been symptomatic while at work, Graham Briggs, the county’s public health director, told reporters.
Briggs decline to say where the person works but added that the patient lives alone and there’s no evidence of any local transmission of the disease.
The state’s first two cases of COVID-19 were in Ramsey and Carver counties. Those patients are recovering at home. On Tuesday, officials announced that an Anoka County resident in their 30s who tested positive for COVID-19 is hospitalized and in critical condition.
COVID-19 is the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus first identified in China that’s been sweeping across the world.
MPR News reporter Catharine Richert contributed reporting from Rochester.
