'Okciyapi' at the Mpls. Sculpture Garden brings some healing

Oct. 7, 2021

State health officials and hospital leaders on Thursday painted an increasingly worrisome picture of Minnesota’s stressed health care systems — short-staffed, with exhausted workers struggling to meet the needs of rapidly rising numbers of COVID-19 and other patients.

Nearly 900 people are in Minnesota hospitals now with COVID, with 234 needing intensive care — the highest count so far in 2021.

While hospitalizations aren’t skyrocketing as they did in fall 2020, the current situation is still pressuring hospitals and ICUs across Minnesota. This week, for the first time in the pandemic, there were more COVID patients hospitalized in greater Minnesota than in the Twin Cities region.

“Across the state, we have more hospitals reporting that they have zero available adult medical surgical beds and zero adult ICU beds available during this latest surge,” Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm told reporters. “These are numbers we didn't see even in the worst of last fall’s surge.”