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MPR News Staff

The number of Minnesotans hospitalized for COVID-19 hit a new high Monday as a major trade group representing Minnesota’s hospitality industry warned of widespread business failures if conditions don’t improve soon.

While many people got back to work in Minnesota this week, continued restrictions are putting restaurants, bars, hotels and more on the brink, said Liz Rammer, CEO of the trade group Hospitality Minnesota, said Monday.

“We know from our recent survey that more than half these businesses face certain, permanent closure in the next two months on the current course,” she said.

While Rammer said her members understand the need to check the spread of the coronavirus, they’ve taken a “monumental hit” the past six weeks. “We’re confident,” she said, “that our hospitality businesses are ready to open now. Our businesses and the public are ready to approach this new new normal.”

Gov. Tim Walz on Monday reiterated the need to balance public health with the need to restart more sectors of the economy, saying “this is the question that’s vexing everyone.” He did not give a date as to when restaurants and bars could start letting people dine in.

Here are the latest coronavirus statistics:

•7,234 confirmed cases via 85,941 tests
•428 deaths
•1,271 cases requiring hospitalization
•396 people remain hospitalized; 166 in intensive care
•4,212 patients recovered

The Health Department’s COVID-19 website has now added a separate death toll for people who lived in long-term care or assisted-living facilities. On Monday, that count was 345 deaths.

One hopeful statistic from Monday: about 58 percent of Minnesota’s total COVID-19 paints have recovered. Last week, that percentage got as low as about 40 percent as testing, and case counts, increased.

More Minnesotans back to work

While the uncertainty continued for bars and restaurants, the state on Monday lifted some restrictions on retailers that could put as many as 30,000 Minnesotans back on the job; bars and restaurants, however, remain takeout-only until May 18.

Walz’s tweaked stay-at-home order lets retailers and other businesses offer curbside pickup of purchases.

Walz on Monday said that about 91 percent of Minnesota’s workforce is now able to return to their workplaces with hygiene and distancing rules in place. Restaurants and bars remain the biggest sector still unable to bring customers back into their buildings.

Rammer made it clear the breaking point is approaching.

“Reopening won’t be sufficient,” she said. “These businesses really need an extra hand up.”

For those that do survive, it will still take time for them to order food and get ready to open. “The coolers have been empty for some time,” she said, emphasizing that business owners want certainty on when they can open.

Walz said he could not yet give dates for the next round of business reopenings. “I don’t have an exact date. … The sooner you can get certainty, the better.”

Many new cases focus around food-processing plants
About 25 percent of the 1,000 new coronavirus cases over the weekend came from five counties that have seen outbreaks in food processing plants, Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said.

Cases in Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota, where an outbreak centered around the JBS pork plant in Worthington, continue to swell. The county continued to have the largest outbreak outside the Twin Cities and the largest by far of any Minnesota county relative to its population.

Confirmed cases in Nobles County have jumped from a handful in mid-April to 1,011 on Monday as testing in the region accelerates, revealing more cases. That’s about 1 in 20 people in the county confirmed infected.

The JBS plant shut on April 20 as executives worked to control the disease’s spread. The union representing workers at JBS said Sunday that it’s been told the facility will reopen on Wednesday. In a statement, union leaders said workers will be spaced farther apart and the plant will expand cleaning and disinfecting.

The closure of the plant and others in the Midwest has caused major disruption in the supply chain, with some hog farmers forced to kill healthy pigs because there was no place to process them.

Similar problems were reported in Stearns County, where COVID-19 cases tied to two packing plants — Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Cold Spring and Jennie-O Turkey in Melrose — have skyrocketed. An undisclosed number of workers at both plants have tested positive for the virus.

At the beginning of last week, there were 55 confirmed coronavirus cases in Stearns. By Sunday, as testing for the disease intensified, there were 589 and by Monday confirmed cases had jumped again to 728.

Kandiyohi County in west-central Minnesota is also seeing cases jump two weeks after officials with the Jennie-O turkey processing plant there said some employees had tested positive for the coronavirus. The county had confirmed three COVID-19 cases back then. On Monday, the Health Department reported 188 people in Kandiyohi County have now tested positive.