CORONAVIRUS

Pioneer Perspectives: Reflecting on 5 years since everything changed

Madelyn Haasken — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 11:50:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, I started looking through a recent photo gallery by Forum photographers headlined “Look back: Photos from COVID-19's eerie onset 5 years later.” Each image served as a powerful and emotional reminder of that strange time.

Scrolling through the gallery transported me back to the spring of 2020 and caused me to reflect for the thousandth time on how truly uncertain and scary that time was. Although I wish I could say otherwise, it’s an era I find myself ruminating over pretty often.

After reaching that five-year milestone, I feel like a lot of people found themselves thinking either “Wow, that feels like just yesterday,” Or “Wow, that feels like a lifetime ago,” or some combination of the two.

In March 2020, I was months away from graduating from Bemidji State. I spent most days frantically turning in assignments for my last few classes and preparing for the moment I would walk the stage and receive my diploma, a moment that would never happen.

I was riding high that spring; I had somehow landed my dream internship — a content creation role at the National Sports Center in Blaine — and I was elated to start.

And then life hit me in the back of the knees with a baseball bat. Just as I felt like I was ready to be thrust into the real world, everything fell apart when the lockdown was announced.

My remaining classes went virtual, our graduation ceremony was canceled and I was laid off from my retail job. At 21 years old, I found myself moving back in with my parents and filing for unemployment at a point in my life where I had expected to be moving into my first apartment and starting my career.

My internship was canceled because sports were canceled. Of course, everyone who knows me knows the story of my internship getting canceled because I bring it up a little too often; I sound like that old guy who played football in high school who constantly claims he could have gone pro if only it wasn’t for that one elbow sprain that ruined everything.

“You know, I could have a really cool career in sports right now if only it weren’t for —”

“Yes, Madelyn, we know. The internship. The COVID. We know.”

Silver linings

Those days, weeks and months in quarantine passed by slowly, like trudging through spring mud.

I spent a lot of time cooped up in my childhood bedroom, allowing a sense of anxiety-ridden dread to overtake me like a demonic entity. But in between the mental breakdowns, there were also plenty of fun moments from those months quarantining with my parents and my two younger brothers, who were stuck at home too.

Some of my favorites include making various disastrous air-fryer recipes with my mom, going on drive-thru trips to Dairy Queen with my brothers and scheduling family meetings on Zoom.

Once the dystopian feeling of the shutdown started to seem mundane, I also settled into doing the typical quarantine activities.

I watched Tiger King. I learned TikTok dances. I made the trendy whipped coffee everyone was making. I spent a lot of time outdoors as the weather warmed up. I mountain-biked and rollerbladed and even took up running, a hobby that lasted for about two days.

And even though I thought the world was ending, things miraculously started returning to normal-ish. I was able to get a remote internship, then a remote job. I moved back to Bemidji and tried to remember how to be an adult and function in public places.

As much resentment as I have for how my life plans flew out the window during COVID, I know those times were worse for so many people. When I think about how others lost their loved ones to the virus, what I lost becomes so insignificant.

In another sense, I think it’s OK to feel validated in your grief for how a situation turned out, even if it’s not that serious.

When I really analyze it, a specific chain of events that kicked off in the spring of 2020 led me to where I am today, and where I am today is pretty alright.

And now that five years have passed, it's interesting to note which memories have stuck with me and which ones have faded away with time. As scary and uncertain as that time was, the more lighthearted moments spent with my family are what I remember the most.

So whether COVID was an insignificant blip on your radar, a minor setback in your life or something more earth-shattering, I hope you take some time this spring to remind yourself how far you’ve come since five years ago when everything changed.

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Swift: 5 years ago, COVID-19 shut down our world. How did it change us?

Tammy Swift — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 10:05:00 GMT

FARGO — It's hard to believe that five years have passed since COVID-19 shut down the world as we know it, because the pandemic affected every single thing — including our perception of time.

Like 9/11 or any world-changing event, we’ve organized our mental calendar according to B.C. (Before COVID) and A.C. (After COVID).

As hindsight is 2020 (which, coincidentally, was the year it all started) we can look back and ask: Who are we after COVID? How did the virus shape us, as individuals, communities or society as a whole?

As weird as it seems now, many initially viewed it as a novelty and a mini vacation, which would surely be over in a few weeks if we hunkered down and sheltered in place.

If we had enough toilet paper and Lysol, we’d be OK, right?

College kids celebrated their extended spring breaks, perhaps assuming they would be back in school in no time. Young children pasted hopeful paper hearts on windows and drew inspiring messages in colored chalk on their driveways. Volunteers whipped up masks by the thousands for health care workers.

Even we adults didn’t seem to mind too much. Who could complain about remote work in your PJs while your dog snoozed at your feet?

Zoom meetings initially seemed like a fresh change of pace. They offered a fascinating peek into people’s home lives, especially when someone’s carefully groomed facade was shattered by a naked toddler streaking by, a cat butt blocking the camera or a spouse yelling at the kids in the background.

People power-walked, bought free weights and vowed to get in shape. (However, sourdough bread-baking, 24/7 yoga pants and stress-eating aren’t conducive to fitness, so many of us eventually wound up turning the treadmill into a clothes rack for all those retail-shopping binges on Amazon.)

Connecting despite social distancing

A feeling of community was everywhere. Neighbors waved and friends air-hugged from afar. Families amused themselves by going for long drives in the country just to find a new quiet gravel road to hike and a new blade of grass for the dog to sniff.

Spring evenings filled with the smoky, slightly sweet aroma of campfires, as people made backyard firepits a regular ritual.

We got creative in how we spent our time. Remember the 8 p.m. “howl,” when folks would channel their inner wolves by “howling” from their doorsteps? The virtual cocktail hour? Parking-lot bingo or drive-in movies at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds? Violin serenades held outside of retirement homes for senior citizens (perhaps the most isolated of all)?

It brought us back to old-school pastimes and homespun hobbies — Gardening! Pie-making! Letter-writing! — as we finally had time to tackle the ambitious projects we always wanted to try.

It introduced oddities like the drive-by graduation party, wedding or baby shower.

For a magical period of time, it saved us from wearing “hard pants.”

Online sales boomed for companies like Amazon, Peloton, Clorox and Zoom, even while many restaurants, movie theaters and other brick-and-mortar businesses struggled. Yet there were exceptions: Barnes & Noble did better than it had in years, as people finally found time to curl up with a good book.

COVID also sparked so many pet adoptions that rescues could scarcely meet the demand. (Sadly, some of those “COVID puppies” wound up re-homed after developing separation anxiety when their 24/7 housemates returned to office and school.)

It created its own lexicon, from the scientific (“flatten the curve” and “contact tracing”) to the slangy ( “the ‘rona,” “FauciOuchies”). It became impossible to go a single day without hearing “the new normal,” even though life felt like anything but that.

Every new day brought a new theory about "the 'rona." Take more zinc! Shave your beard! Sanitize your Instacart groceries as if you're scrubbing for heart surgery!

It turned us into a nation of Door Dashers and Grub Hubbers, who were willing to pay $21 for a Blizzard delivered to our door.

As it forced us to live and work in our homes, we realized our kitchens were inefficient and our offices were too small. A wave of home improvement followed — if we could afford the lumber.

It caused families to spread out as much as humanly possible in their homes, so as not to interfere with mom’s work Zoom or little brother’s online class. Our home Wi-Fis struggled to support these new demands on bandwidth, so we sometimes had to make sure other family members didn’t stream YouTube when Dad had his Teams job interview.

In fact, it made social distancing the “new normal” in every setting — from lines at the pharmacy to city commission meetings, church services and even baseball games.

It forced educators to get creative in order to keep online learners engaged. That included tactics like calling directly on individual students to see if they were listening or requiring students to have their cameras on at all times.

It became more acceptable to cancel plans or take a day off for feeling unwell, allowing people to take better care of themselves and hopefully slow the spread of all contagious illnesses.

It prompted a major workforce shift. Some older workers retired early — sometimes by choice, sometimes not. Many workers in the hospitality industry lost their jobs and didn’t return when those venues re-opened. Middle-managers, who picked up the slack when employees left, reported widespread burnout.

As the workforce hemorrhaged workers, some experts predicted the labor shortage would prompt better pay and working conditions for employees. But many companies eventually returned to doing business as usual.

Through it all, a silver lining emerged: An unprecedented number of employees saw the pandemic as a turning point — a reminder that life was too short to do work that didn’t satisfy them. Many left their old jobs to start a business or find a job that more closely aligned with their values.

A growing divide

But all was not paper hearts and sourdough bread. Far from it. COVID-19 laid bare a lot of fractures in our societal and political worlds. True, they had been festering for years for people who would acknowledge them. But COVID stripped away all of the pretense.

Conspiracy theories thrived. Different factions emerged based on people’s core beliefs and social media bubbles. The divide grew wider between those who believed in science and those who viewed the pandemic as a conspiracy, with different politicians and media companies widening the gulf even more.

Vaccines were released in a record amount of time, but even these fueled powerful “for” and “against” factions.

By now, nothing around the pandemic was novel or new. We were fed up with the online meetings, the isolation and the doomscrolling that made us feel more helpless and hopeless.

COVID took away many of the support structures that had long helped us feel safe: the schools our kids attended every day, the belief our modern medical system could handle almost any disease, the jobs that felt secure, the neighbors and friends we saw as part of our community, the supply chains that seemed to effortlessly crank out cleaning supplies and flour and freezers.

It’s no surprise that our country’s mental health plummeted, as therapists struggled to minister to our collective anxiety, depression and loneliness, as well as our fears over our country’s growing ideological chasm.

The pandemic took away graduations, weddings and funerals in a way that could never be replaced.

It made “sheltering in place” increasingly more dangerous in homes wracked by domestic violence.

It forced people to die in hospitals alone, because every precaution was needed to avoid the virus’s spread.

Exhausted health care workers became the undeserving targets for our anger and frustration. Hospitals had to post signs warning to be nice or get kicked out. Unsurprisingly, burnout surged, especially in health care and education.

We watched our children struggle with remote learning, trying to contain kindergartners who had barely learned to sit still as they now had to learn through a computer screen and teenagers who rolled their eyes at us for asking questions about their classes.

We watched our kids’ mental health suffer as they were cut off from their peers and from many of the adults who backed us up as a support system. We watched them hurt as their sense of security was ripped away from them overnight.

As we tried to be their pillars of support, we were worried too. Would our jobs survive? And then what if we catch this thing, get sick and die? Would we lose our house? Would we lose a loved one or friend?

We gained further respect for the teachers and support staff at our schools, who also had those worries yet managed to do their best for students. Some grew accustomed to lecturing to banks of screens with the cameras turned off. Those of us who balanced working from home with overseeing distance learning became much more grateful not to be homeschooling parents.

When we finally emerged from the darkness, we felt hopeful and grateful. Grateful that we had survived and that this grim period seemed to be behind us.

Suddenly, we were set free — but was that OK? It felt odd to do normal things again. Should we be driving around? When do we stop wearing masks? How do we make small talk again?

It was baffling to look back and see how a few years of COVID had managed to warp and twist hundreds of years of ritual and habit.

Life returned to its usual pace, but we were never quite the same. We had seen how fragile we are and how much we need each other.

And what was the point, we wondered? Was it to see the value of health? Should we learn how to work together, even if we had different beliefs? Was it time to focus on the collective good instead of our own well-being?

And if it happens again, what have we learned?

These Forum employees contributed to this column: Alicia Strnad, Tasha Carvell, Kris Kerzman, Anna Paige, Helmut Schmidt, Kaity Young, Matt Von Pinnon and Ingrid Harbo.
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Minnesota math, reading scores still far below pre-pandemic levels, statewide assessment shows

Alex Derosier / St. Paul Pioneer Press — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 17:43:50 GMT

ST. PAUL — Minnesota students’ reading and math scores on state proficiency tests have leveled off a bit, but they still haven’t recovered from a big dip during the pandemic, according to data released Thursday, Aug. 29 by the state education department.

As was the case last year, fewer than half of public school students met grade standards in reading, math and science, according to Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment results for 2024.

This year’s MCA results show that 45.5% of Minnesota students reached grade-level standards in math, the same as the year before. Reading scores also remained stable in 2024, with 49.9% of students testing as proficient.

Science, the lowest-scoring category at 39.6%, was up 0.4 percentage points from 2023. Last year it had dropped 2.1 percentage points. Like the other scores, it’s significantly down from before the pandemic. In 2019, about 50.7% were proficient in state science standards.

Asked about a long-term slide in scores that started before the pandemic and worsened during, Education Commissioner Willie Jett, who took his position in 2023, said test scores are just “one important way” the state measures school success.

“There are just so many different ways to measure academic achievement,” he said during a Thursday call with reporters from across the state, noting education officials also look at other metrics such as consistent attendance, graduation rates, and academic progress.

Scores remain down since pandemic

Statewide, scores are down significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, which education officials say presented a challenge for students and teachers as schools closed and students shifted to remote or hybrid learning. Reading and math are both down 8.4 percentage points from 2019.

Scores had already been sliding before the pandemic. On the 2014 MCA, 63% of students in grades three through eight were proficient in math and 59% were proficient in reading.

While scores have remained at or near lows reached during the pandemic, education officials said they were encouraged by the decline leveling out, as well as rising consistent attendance rates.

In the 2022-2023 school year, statewide consistent attendance grew to 74.5% from 69.8% the year before. But the rate remains significantly below where it sat before the pandemic.

Consistent attendance means students attending at least 90% of the time. Before the pandemic in 2019, around 85.4% of students were consistently attending school statewide.

State education officials say they think a major state funding increase from the 2023 legislative session, when the Democratic-Farmer-Labor-controlled state government boosted education funding by more than $2 billion and tied the formula to inflation, as well as other measures like new reading instruction standards and teacher recruitment, will turn around flagging schools.

“We’re working hard to put these new measures into place, and I think it’s going to be the long-term measures, many of which involve the large scale and systemic changes, that’s going to positively impact students for years to come,” Jett said. ”��s all across the country have faced some unprecedented challenges the last few years, and I just believe we’ve made some progress.”

Achievement gap

Minnesota still has an achievement gap between students of different ethnicities.

In past years, white students were about twice as likely to be proficient in math and reading than Black, Hispanic and American Indian students. Results this year only changed slightly, according to the state education department.

Minnesota reports the performance of 400,000 or so students around the state in August each year. Testing happens in the spring.

The state measures student proficiency in reading, math and science based on numbers from standardized tests including the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment and Minnesota Test of Academic Skills.

Students take the reading and math tests in third through eighth grades and once in high school so state education officials can gauge the success of schools. Science testing happens in fifth and eighth grades and once in high school.

They’re also used as part of a federal education accountability system that’s required under the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

The test isn’t mandatory to advance in school. This year nearly 93% of students took the math test and nearly 95% took the reading tests. And in 2020 the state did not have the MCA as the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools. Before the pandemic participation rates were higher — in 2018 and 2019 around 98% of students took tests.

Other measures of school performance include academic progress, attendance and graduation rates in what’s called the “North Star Accountability System.” The state of Minnesota gives additional aid to schools that do poorly on those metrics.

Reaction to scores

Statewide teachers union Education Minnesota said new investments in education from the state will take time to be reflected in test scores, and that school districts are struggling with a shortage of qualified staff.

“Too many schools still lack sufficient mental health teams, class sizes are too large and too many students are missing too much school,” said union president Denise Specht. “The Legislature and Gov. Tim Walz have made historic investments in public education, and that will help. We’re on the right track, but not there yet.”

Republicans say there isn’t enough flexibility in how schools can use funding and used Thursday’s test scores to take aim at DFL policies.

“These test results are a warning to every parent that our kids are not getting what they need in the classroom,” said Sen. Julia Coleman, a Waconia Republican who is her party’s lead on the Senate Education Policy Committee. “Despite record increases in funding and better attendance, testing scores are stuck.”

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As school nears, doctors worry about Minnesota's undervaccinated kids

Cathy Wurzer and Gracie Stockton / MPR News — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:42:00 GMT

The school year starts next week for many Minnesota families and physicians are concerned about children being undervaccinated.

Right now, there’s a global outbreak of measles, with 34 cases reported in Minnesota; there have been more than 500 cases of whooping cough so far this year. Minnesota is also experiencing a summertime COVID-19 surge, with cases on the rise following Fourth of July celebrations.

As it attracts about 2 million people in its 12-day run, the State Fair is next on doctors’ radar.

“We always look for a little surge in our friends called viruses after the Great Minnesota Get-Together because we are in close contact, and there’s just a lot being shared,” Dr. Abe Jacob, a pediatrician with M Health Fairview told MPR News Monday.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, vaccine hesitancy has gone up and vaccination rates for young kids have dropped. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 73.4% of 6-year-olds and 40.5% of 13-year-olds were up-to-date on all recommended vaccines.

For the 2019-20 school year, 92.6% of kindergartners had their MMR, or measles, mumps and rubella, vaccine. That rate dipped to 87.1% for 2023-24.

Before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, some 3 to 4 million Americans were infected annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2000, measles was considered eliminated, but case numbers have started to creep back up.

“Diseases like measles have made a comeback because of low immunization rates. We thought we had these diseases beat years ago,“ Minnesota Medical Association President Dr. Laurel Ries said in a statement earlier this month.

Nearly all of the 34 Minnesota cases this year were in unvaccinated children, Jacob said.

“When you see one child with measles, you really never want to see it again,” Jacob added. “They have high fevers, they’re often hospitalized, a horrible rash, they’re really sick. And I think I would never want it for my own kids. I certainly wouldn’t want it for the patients that I care for.”

Jacob said it’s not too late to get kids their shots before school starts.

The FDA approved an updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine last week, designed to better target variants in circulation. While it doesn’t always prevent disease, the vaccine helps reduce the severity of illness and the risk of long-COVID and avoid hospitalization and death.

“I think, especially with kids and being in those school environments and classrooms and the risk of bringing it home and spreading it then to more vulnerable adults, it’s definitely worth getting the COVID booster,” Jacob said.

Further, the Biden administration is again offering households four free COVID tests, which will be available at the end of September.

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COVID-19 activity continues to increase in Minnesota for the eighth straight week

Craig Helmstetter / MPR News — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 19:25:09 GMT

In the week ending Aug. 3, 218 Minnesotans were admitted to hospitals throughout the state with COVID-19, according to the Minnesota Department of Health’s most recent data.

This is the eighth consecutive week of increasing COVID hospitalizations, starting from a low point of 58 admissions in the first week of June.

While lower than many points earlier in the pandemic, this upward trend so far mirrors last summer’s slightly later surge — which ended up lasting five months and peaked at over 600 weekly COVID-19 hospitalizations in Minnesota.

As has been the case since COVID-19 started putting people in hospitals, older adults are bearing the brunt. Over one-quarter of the 218 COVID-related hospitalizations reported in week ending Aug. 3 were among Minnesotans aged 85 or older.

Since there are a total of only about 116,000 people in that oldest age group, their 58 admissions work out to a rate of 50 hospitalizations per 100,000 — by far the highest rate of any age group in the state.

COVID-19 mortality levels have not yet reflected much of an increase. Nine Minnesotans died with COVID-19 in the most recent week with finalized data, the week ending July 20. Preliminary data from the Minnesota Department of Health suggests that may be changing, however, with twice as many deaths caused at least in part by COVID-19 in the week ending Aug. 3.

Wastewater data, a leading indicator of COVID-19 activity, raises another warning sign that Minnesota may see more COVID-related hospitalizations and even deaths in the coming weeks. Data released Friday by the University of Minnesota’s ongoing Wastewater Surveillance Study shows early August COVID measurements statewide reaching levels not seen since January — which is when the state saw its last major peak in COVID-related hospitalizations.

The timing for the upswing in COVID-19 activity here in Minnesota, which mirrors national trends, is mixed. On the downside, the current increase is coming at a time when Minnesotans are soon gathering in even larger numbers, including at the State Fair and in classrooms with the start of the fall academic calendar.

On the upside, an updated formulation of the COVID-19 vaccine will be widely available in September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The updated vaccine is designed to provide a better line of defense against the currently circulating COVID-19 variants.

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Whistleblowers allege church with ND ties is replacing religion with riches

C.S. Hagen — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:00 GMT

Editor's note: This story is part four of a five-part series examining the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, its beliefs, practices and its role in the North Dakota town of Neche, population 344.

NECHE, N.D. — As former accountant turned “universal leader” Bruce D. Hales prepares the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church for the theoretical Rapture, his family and church members are buying up luxury properties and expanding homes around the world.

From Neche, North Dakota, to Sydney, Australia, the Brethren — an isolated yet global religious group with about 54,000 members — has poured millions of dollars into grand estates, according to data obtained by Forum News Service.

In tiny Neche, population 344, the Brethren are bankrolling home and office expansions and massive houses. Additional lavish spending by Brethren members in Australia was the subject of an investigative report by The Age, a leading Australian newspaper.

The developments are new as Brethren members once preferred to live frugally, according to former members. The church and their members now have a large financial stake in businesses, government contracts and real estate and are collectively worth about $65 billion, according to one source.

“Money in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has replaced faith in Jesus Christ,” said Cheryl Bawtinheimer Hope, a former Brethren member.

An ongoing financial investigation in Australia and scrutiny of the Brethren elsewhere prompted Forum News Service to learn more about the religion and its role in Neche. Interviews and research paint a picture that shows a group with a vast financial reach. The church is facing allegations of blurred lines between its religious organization and Brethren-linked businesses.

Stephen Kent, a retired Canadian professor considered an expert in alternative religions, receives information about the Brethren fairly regularly.

In 2007, elders within the Brethren told Kent that: "The Brethren would normally, on a monthly basis, give gifts to Mr. Hales as well as other people in responsible positions, and that money would be carried by what we jokingly would've called the Brethren Express,” Kent said.

“An elder (also) said that Hales used the money to assist the needy, but critics said that it was to lobby the Australian (Prime Minister John Howard) and American (President George W. Bush) governments,” Kent said.

“Another source said that he [Hales] must give his permission before members are allowed to marry, requires all members' internet access to be controlled by devices leased from a Brethren company and, most of all, does not tolerate any doubting or questioning of authority," Kent said.

Excessive time for indoctrination, financial manipulation and dependence are some of the aspects that lend credence to claims that the Brethren is a cult — as outlined by cultic expert Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control — a four-part checklist on how cults recruit and maintain control over members’ behavior, thoughts, information and emotions.

Despite multiple efforts, Forum News Service was denied face-to-face interviews with Brethren leaders or entry to its Neche meeting hall. A Brethren representative responded by email to some questions, and many of those responses are included below.

More money in Neche

All her adult life Zelda Hartje has worked with Brethren members.

As the assessor for Pembina County, Hartje is also the administrator of Pembina County Historical Museum, and was once a public school teacher in Neche before the Brethren began their own educational system, One�� Global.

She remembered the days when Neche was a religious center for the sect. When she was younger, Brethren houses were modest and smaller, she said.

Based on data alone, it’s clear something has changed. There’s more money in Neche these days. Houses in Neche can be bought for as low as $20,000, Hartje said, but new Brethren houses are the costliest ones in the county.

Two large newly-built homes in Neche are worth more than $800,000 each, Hartje said. A red two-story house near Campus & Co. store, the Brethren’s exclusive grocery and liquor store, was sold over market value of about $215,000 to a Brethren family for more than $400,000, Hartje said.

“No other home in the county has sold for that price. It’s been in the last 10 years, and those two big new ones are brand new. They’re the kind of homes you would see in a nice part of Fargo,” said Hartje, adding that in Fargo the estates would be worth well over $1 million.

Hartje said she also hasn’t seen anything from a tax perspective that raises her eyebrows yet.

Overall, the disparity between Brethren investments and non-Brethren residents is good for the town’s economic outlook, said Hartje, adding that Brethren members aren’t allowed to sleep in hotels, so they need larger houses to accommodate guests.

“The most valuable homes in Pembina County right now are in Neche. And the others are just modest with modest people living in them,” Hartje said.

A Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service that all businesses operate separately from the church and that the success Brethren members have had around the world can be attributed to a good work ethic.

“We can observe that Brethren families work very hard, and as a result some have become very successful, leading to their hiring lots of people and contributing significantly to the towns around them,” the spokesperson said.

Carl Symington, a Brethren member from Pembina, North Dakota, acknowledged the Brethren’s deep pockets, which works as a safety net for the church’s members, he said in an interview with Forum News Service.

“A lot of things get blown out of proportion, and our organization has a lot of support, financial support, even credit card debt support. They will help us out but on the condition that it doesn’t happen again,” Symington said.

‘Disaster capitalists’

Recently, the Brethren’s expenditures and government contracts attracted media attention, and also the scrutiny of the Australian Tax Office, or ATO, which launched a no-notice raid in March this year into what former members describe as the Brethren’s financial wing based in Sydney, known as the Universal Business Team, or UBT. Shortly afterward, the Brethren’s Australian accounting firm, UBTA, announced it was closing.

Prior to the ATO raid, Australian and New Zealand media outlets reported that Brethren members are taking advantage of tax breaks in their countries through a complicated network of charitable trusts — like the Brethren’s charitable arm known as Rapid Relief Team — and that members are told to have an “investor mindset” ready to take advantage of crises.

Hales, who travels in a private jet, encourages his flock to “charge the highest price to the worldly people” in a doctrine called “spoiling the Egyptians,” which was his direction through his 2002 published works called white books.

“The world is there to take what we want from it, and leave everything we don’t want. Spoil the Egyptians as quick and as fast as you can,” Hales is quoted as saying.

Twenty years later, speakers at a Brethren-linked international business conference in Sydney in September 2023 lectured attendees on how to continue generating profits and take advantage of times of crisis, The Post reported late last year.

Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both international events from which Brethren members have reaped millions of dollars, according to a Forum News Service review of available data.

Before money is made, however, Brethren members need a trailblazer to help foster good will in beleaguered markets, said Damian Hastie, a researcher and founder of Open & Candid website, which started in 2020 after he began looking into government contracts.

“The RRT and the Brethren are disaster capitalists,” he said. “Everywhere RRT is working there is a Brethren company picking up business. And that seems odd to me to have a charity that works on disasters, and then all their businesses make a profit later.”

Acting as the Brethren’s public relations branch or charitable arm, RRT provides services to areas of natural disasters, according to the Brethren spokesperson.

“When catastrophe[s] take place, the Rapid Relief Team is equipped to step in at a moment’s notice, and support emergency services with quality food and refreshments, and provide tangible support to those affected,” the RRT reported on its website.

When the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, RRT was there, helping families with food boxes. After the war between Russia and Ukraine began, RRT was also there, driving 51 trucks of food during Operation 322 – Delivering Aid to Ukraine.

“The charities associated with our church fund the Rapid Relief Team, which supports emergency first responders, the One�� Global school system, and initiatives ranging from donating hay to drought-stricken farmers [to] raising millions for aid in Ukraine,” the Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service.

In 2023, the RRT supported 1,387 events, served 374,900 meals and contributed 61,533 volunteer hours around the globe, according to numbers provided by the Brethren. Of that number in the United States the RRT supported 161 events, served 24,975 meals and contributed 7,142 volunteer hours.

“The total expenditure for RRT was more than $525,000 for the year,” the Brethren spokesperson told Forum News Service.

Information provided to Forum News Service, which was leaked to Hastie by a Brethren member who attended a Sydney business conference in September 2023, called Strive Seminar, reported that Brethren businesses boasted of $46 billion in turnover, or annual income, which is nearly three times what they earned in 2014.

The accumulated wealth of the Plymouth Brethren is about $65 billion, and profit for Brethren companies in 2023 was about $6.3 billion, according to information shared with attendees during the Strive Seminar.

“They [RRT] do good work, but it’s costing them a minimal amount of money compared to their overall worth,” said Hastie.

The spokesperson for the Brethren told Forum News Service that there is a distinct separation between church and business, and that the church does not employ anyone.

“In addition, our partners such as UBT (called the Brethren’s financial wing by former members) are not owned and operated by the church. Instead, they have been set up and are run by church members for the benefit of other church members and non-members,” the spokesperson said.

But as Hastie points out: Why would UBT, the church’s financial wing, which until last year reported on its website that it was owned by the Brethren, boast of its financial earnings?

“I’ve seen examples of charities getting 500% return on their investment. All tax free. That’s where the charities are really making the money, it’s not in the meeting rooms. They’re using religion to make money,” Hastie told Forum News Service.

A spokesperson for UBT, Adam Speed, told Forum News Service that UBT profits are reinvested into the group’s school, the Rapid Relief Team and other charitable causes.

“UBT’s primary role is to provide cutting-edge business advice and services to its customers,” Speed said.

The money trail

Much of Hastie’s research is focused on the Commonwealth countries (such as Australia and New Zealand and Canada), but in the United States, Forum News Service found multiple companies with ties to the Hales family who began winning procurement bids at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At Open & Candid, Hastie tracked Brethren member companies across the globe and found out they were awarded nearly $4 billion in COVID-19 contracts with over 85% of those contracts linked to “Bruce Hales and his family.”

In America, some of the companies with ties to Bruce Hales or his family profited from the COVID-19 pandemic, Department of Defense contracts and the U.S. Mission to Ukraine. So far, Forum News Service has not found any evidence linking businesses owned by Brethren members in Neche to government contracts.

Business dealings in the USA included:

Brethren-linked company Unispace, an office design firm, won PPE contracts worth a total of $28 million in the United States, with $15 million in California; $11.5 million in Maryland and $2 million in Louisiana, according to research performed by Hastie and Forum News Service. Shortly after winning the contracts in 2021, majority shareholders Gareth and Charles Hales sold Unispace, whose parent company is Australian-based Unispace Global Pty Limited to PAG Asia Capital, an investment firm, for $300 million, according to the Financial Review. After the sale, billions in PPE contracts were carried over to a newly-formed Australian-based Sante Global Pty. Ltd. which was once called Unispace Health Pty. Ltd., and to other companies connected to the Hales family. Coulmed Products Group, LLC out of New Jersey, worked in a partnership with Sante Global, a company registered in England with the sons of Bruce Hales: Charles and Gareth Hales, as shareholders. Coulmed Products landed a deal in 2020 with the U.S. Department of Defense for disposable isolation gowns worth $152.7 million. In 2021, Sante USA, LLC, a subsidiary of Sante Global, won a procurement bid worth $8.1 million to provide medical gloves to Indian Health Service in Oklahoma, according to data collected by ProPublica. Sante USA, LLC won a total of $28.5 million in federal contracts and subcontracts to provide goods such as rubber gloves to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service in Oklahoma; construction services for the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Pacific, and medical equipment for the U.S. Mission to Ukraine in 2023.

‘We were under pressure’

Steve Simmons, a former trustee of One�� Global, the Brethren’s educational system, in Auckland, New Zealand, approached the Get A Life podcast team to share his experience in early 2024.

One�� Global has about 120 campuses in 20 countries teaching about 10,000 students, said Simmons.

Before he left the Brethren, Simmons received a directive from the Brethren in 2014 that the school needed renovations and they were to use a construction company called Unispace Global, which at the time was owned in part by Bruce D. Hales’s sons, Gareth and Charles.

Although Brethren leaders originally said the project would be done at cost, the invoice grew to $650,000 New Zealand dollars, more than three times the price it would have been from a non-Brethren licensed construction crew, Simmons said.

“They hadn’t even asked for any competitive quotes, and all proceeds were going to the Brethren,” Simmons said.

“We were under pressure,” to agree to work with Unispace, Simmons said, adding that he used to believe: “Bruce Hales is so close to Jesus Christ that he can hear his heartbeat. How could he be wrong?”

After Simmons received outside help and a different quote of $120,000 for the same project, nothing could have prepared him for the response he received after calling for a special meeting. His actions were condemned. He was accused of being disloyal to the school’s trust and to the Hales name, Simmons said.

“I had a sense there was a guillotine swinging over my head,” Simmons said.

“From that point on I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was trying to stand up for the Brethren who I was representing as a trustee,” he said.

Simmons said that similar renovation projects were forced upon all Brethren’s schools at more than 120 campuses.

“Each campus only has to launder about $600,000. All Unispace had to do was calculate a sensible cost price for the job, add $600,000 and push it through. Anyone who objected was cut out of the profits or threatened with excommunication,” Simmons said.

“Repeat the formula 135 times, and voila, $80 million has been laundered from tax exempt charitable funds donated for children, right into the pockets of Unispace directors. Everything is invoiced, the books all balance and if nobody squeals they will get away with it,” Simmons said.

A regional director for One�� Global in America who wished to remain anonymous because he was not allowed to speak on behalf of the educational system, told Forum News Service that OSG school boards are expected to work with established laws and regulatory standards, including contracts and procurement processes.

“OSG does not direct our schools to use any provider for the contract work they undertake. And we do expect that schools will always seek to obtain the best value for money in any contracts,” said the regional director in an email, but neglected to fully answer additional questions.

Questions were also sent to UBT departments in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and to a Brethren spokesperson as well as other One�� Global representatives, but they did not reply.

Simmons was “shut up” and then excommunicated from the Brethren in 2022, he said.

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Biden tests positive for COVID, will self-isolate in Delaware

Nandita Bose and Steve Holland / Reuters — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:27:06 GMT

LAS VEGAS - President Joe Biden, under pressure from fellow Democrats to drop his re-election campaign, tested positive for COVID-19 while visiting Las Vegas on Wednesday and is self-isolating after experiencing mild symptoms, the White House said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced the positive test for the 81-year-old Democrat after Biden canceled a speech due to the diagnosis.

"He is vaccinated and boosted and experiencing mild symptoms, Jean-Pierre said.

As he boarded Air Force One to depart Las Vegas to recuperate in Delaware, Biden told reporters: "Good, I feel good." But he climbed the stairs slowly, holding the railing tightly and pausing a few steps in and again towards the top.

The illness comes at a crucial time for Biden, who has been losing ground in battleground states against Republican Donald Trump, who is headlining a triumphant convention this week after he survived an assassination attempt on Saturday.

The White House said Biden planned to spend a long weekend at his Delaware beach house. It was unclear how long the sickness would keep him for the campaign trail.

Minutes after the announcement, the president's motorcade was on the move to the Las Vegas airport after taping a radio interview in the city.

Biden had greeted a couple of dozen people at a Mexican restaurant prior to going into the radio interview. He was running late to deliver a speech to Latino civil rights group UnidosUS when the organizer, Janet Murguia, announced he had tested positive for COVID.

There were groans in the conference room at the news.

"He said to tell my folks that we're not going to get rid of him that quickly, we're going to have a chance to hear from him in the future directly," Murguia said.

Biden, who had spent two nights in Vegas on the campaign trail, is locked in a battle with some fellow Democrats who worry he is too old to seek re-election and want him to step aside in favor of another candidate.

He has been defiant in the face of the calls to quit the race, telling one interviewer that only the "Lord Almighty" could persuade him to go.

"He will be returning to Delaware where he will self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time," said Jean-Pierre.

Biden suffered a blow earlier on Wednesday when a prominent Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Adam Schiff of California, said it was time for him to "pass the torch" to someone else.

Some 40% of Democratic registered voters said Biden should drop his reelection bid, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Tuesday. Some 65% of independent registered voters agreed with them.

Some 58% of Democratic registered voters told the poll they believed Biden is too old to work in government - 70% of independent registered voters agreed.

The White House cited Biden's doctor as saying he had been suffering from upper respiratory symptoms earlier in the afternoon.

"He felt OK for his first event of the day, but given that he was not feeling better, point of care testing for COVID-19 was conducted and the results were positive for the COVID-19 virus," the statement said.

The White House said Biden will be self-isolating in accordance with Centers for Disease Control guidelines.

His symptoms are mild and he has received an initial dose of Paxlovid, the doctor said.

Biden's last bout with COVID began in July 2022. He tested positive on July 21, recovered on July 27, tested positive with a rebound case on July 30 and was finally cleared on Aug 7.

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Audit: Minnesota failed to investigate fraud complaints in child nutrition program

Deena Winter / Minnesota Reformer — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 21:18:27 GMT

The state’s legislative auditor found that the Minnesota Department of Education failed miserably in its duty to properly oversee millions of federal dollars it administered to nonprofits to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a special review by the Office of the Legislative Auditor released Thursday, June 13.

The audit examined how MDE administered a child nutrition program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and found the agency’s inadequate oversight “created opportunities for fraud.”

Federal prosecutors have charged scores of Minnesotans with ripping off the federal program by at least $250 million in the nation’s largest pandemic fraud scheme. Federal prosecutors say they gave away very little food, but got paid millions of dollars, which they used to buy Porsches and Teslas, vacations in the Maldives and homes from Prior Lake to Kenya.

Prosecutors have charged 70 people so far with being part of the Feeding Our Future case, named after one of two nonprofits at the center of the scheme. Eighteen people have pleaded guilty, one fled the country, and five were convicted of bribery, money laundering and wire fraud charges last week. Two were acquitted.

The nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition were supposed to oversee other vendors and nonprofits purporting to be giving away ready-to-eat meals at sites all over the state, but instead, prosecutors said they enabled and participated in the fraud, keeping a portion of the federal money doled out. Founded less than five years earlier, they grew from collecting a few million dollars a year before the pandemic to dispersing about $200 million each in 2021.

Auditors found MDE failed to act on warning signs even prior to the pandemic; didn’t exercise its authority to make Feeding Our Future follow program requirements; and was ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered with Feeding Our Future.

As far back as 2018, MDE was getting complaints about Feeding Our Future and its food distribution sites, receiving at least 30 complaints from mid-2018 through 2021. And although the agency is required by law to promptly investigate complaints or irregularities, it didn’t investigate some complaints about Feeding Our Future at all. When MDE did follow up on complaints, its investigations were inadequate, to the point where “MDE inappropriately asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself,” the report said.

MDE’s procedures emphasized having the complainants and subjects resolve complaints on their own, the report said. The first step of their process was to share the complaint with the subject, so they could investigate their own conduct and try to resolve it without MDE intervention. When that didn’t work, MDE would make a formal report of the complaint, but again they gave the subject an opportunity to respond. This created a system ripe with potential for retaliation.

The legislative auditor found MDE failed in numerous ways to prevent the fraud, including:

By failing to use its authority to deny applications for the program years before the pandemic. By failing to verify statements made by the nonprofit Feeding Our Future before approving applications, especially “high-risk applicants.” By failing to follow-up on its 2018 review of Feeding Our Future’s child nutrition operations which raised concerns By only conducting limited off-site monitoring of food distribution sites.

MDE did stop payments to the nonprofit in 2021, but Feeding Our Future sued the state, alleging racial discrimination. Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann ruled that the state couldn’t halt payments unless they found fraud, so MDE resumed payments.

In a written response to the report, Education Commissioner Willie L. Jett II said MDE’s oversight “met applicable standards” and the agency “made effective referrals to law enforcement.”

“What happened with Feeding Our Future was a travesty – a coordinated, brazen abuse of nutrition programs that exist to ensure access to healthy meals for low-income children,” he wrote. “The responsibility for this flagrant fraud lies with the indicted and convicted fraudsters.”

Jett said the department has made changes to strengthen its oversight, establishing an Office of Inspector General, adding a general counsel’s office, training staff on updated fraud-reporting policy, and contracting with a firm to conduct financial reviews of certain sponsors.

During the recent trial of seven defendants charged with defrauding the program, the director of Minnesota’s nutrition program acknowledged she got some pushback from her own supervisors when she raised concerns about suspiciously high reimbursement claims.

Emily Honer, director of nutrition program services for the MDE, testified that she quickly became suspicious of huge reimbursement requests and alerted her superiors, the USDA, and eventually, the FBI.

Honer testified that she was not aware of any MDE employees who went to the locations where people claimed to be serving unfathomable amounts of meals daily. She said her employees didn’t go to the sites because that was the responsibility of the nonprofit groups overseeing the vendors. And prosecutors said those nonprofits — Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition — enabled and participated in the fraud.

Honer said due to Feeding Our Future’s “very nasty lawsuit,” MDE employees were often hauled into court and had to follow MDE protocol of working through concerns with the nonprofit sponsors overseeing the sites.

Outside of a month where MDE payments were stopped to some sponsors, MDE kept paying reimbursement claims until the FBI investigation went public in January 2022.

Republicans have blamed the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Gov. Tim Walz for failing to prevent the fraud. Walz has said the state’s hands were tied by a court order to resume payments, although Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann disputed that in a rare rebuke.

Honer testified that MDE opted to waive in-person monitoring of sites, but could still do “desk audits.” But Honer said she didn’t do any desk audits and didn’t ask any of her subordinates to do them — despite concerns that prompted her to go first to the USDA Office of Inspector General, and then the FBI, in April 2021.

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Minnesota sent frontline worker bonuses to 290 dead people, audit finds

Max Nesterak / Minnesota Reformer — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:04:00 GMT

Just 60% of the more than 1 million people who received $487.45 for working frontline jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic in Minnesota clearly deserved the bonuses, according to a state audit released on Tuesday, June 11.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor estimates 9% of recipients were not eligible for the payments, while for the rest, it just wasn’t clear whether they should have received checks meant for nurses, first responders, prison guards, sales clerks, janitors and other workers who couldn’t stay home during the pandemic.

The auditor analyzed just a fraction of recipients from the Minnesota Frontline Worker Pay Program and found numerous payouts to suspicious applicants, including people who used the same identification numbers, people who listed home and work addresses outside of the state, and people who used “high-risk bank routing numbers.”

The auditors also identified payouts to 290 people who died before they received a bonus, including one person who died two years prior to the application date opening.

The report says the Department of Labor and Industry, which oversaw the program, did not adequately investigate clearly fraudulent applications, nor did they ensure the contractors they hired retained enough data to evaluate the payouts. The Department of Revenue also did not verify the income of all applicants to ensure they were eligible.

Roughly 85% of those who applied for a bonus received one, according to the report.

“Remember, this program was set-up as a zero-sum game with a fixed amount of state funding — $500 million — to be divided equally among all eligible applicants,” Legislative Auditor Judy Randall told the Legislative Audit Commission on Tuesday. “The more applicants who were approved, the less each applicant received.”

Indeed, when lawmakers passed the funding with near unanimity, they believed workers would receive $750.

Fraud and waste have come to define pandemic relief programs, from the Paycheck Protection Program to the Federal Child Nutrition Program, as government agencies were directed to quickly pay out billions of dollars.

In the frontline worker pay program, a divided Legislature didn’t agree to the funding until more than two years into the pandemic and wanted to get the money into workers’ bank accounts as quickly as possible.

Randall said her office has reported its finding to the FBI, the Attorney General’s office and the Ramsey County attorney, while the report recommends the state Department of Revenue try to recoup erroneous payments.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor is part of the legislative branch and typically focuses its critiques on state agencies under the executive branch. But their report on the frontline worker pay program offered a diplomatic rebuke to state lawmakers for how the law was written.

For example, the program included requirements that couldn’t easily be verified, like if people worked in-person and in close proximity to others, so the Department of Labor and Industry had to essentially take applicants at their word.

The auditors reached out to the employers of a small sample of recipients to verify if workers did work in person and in close proximity to others for at least 120 hours between March 2020 and June 2021, but in many cases the employers either didn’t respond or said “don’t know.”

“The overarching theme of the findings is that the issue is with the program itself, not how it was implemented,” DLI Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach told the Legislative Audit Commission on Tuesday.

Blissenbach also noted in her department’s response that the auditor revised its report after the agency showed some flagged applicants were indeed eligible for the benefit and said they might have been able to prove eligibility for others if given more time.

Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, agreed that lawmakers shouldered some of the blame, and thanked the auditors for not taking an “apologist view” either for the state agencies or the Legislature.

“Where did the carelessness happen? It happened in the Legislature,” Rest said.

But Randall said even a flawed law doesn’t absolve state agencies.

“The law does not say, ‘definitely stop fraud,’ but I would expect we all think we should try to stop fraud,” Randall said.

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RSV rising rapidly; COVID-19 continues its climb and flu season is underway

Benjamin Clary and Craig Helmstetter / MPR News — Sat, 02 Dec 2023 18:41:51 GMT

Respiratory illnesses are on the rise. COVID-19 and more recently influenza have been leading to more hospitalizations, but respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is currently increasing fastest among the three in the Twin Cities seven-county region.

Over the most recent two weeks, the number of RSV-related hospital admissions in the Twin Cities more than doubled, compared with increases of about one-quarter for both COVID-19 and the flu. For the time being, however, COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the region, at 5.6 per 100,000, remain much higher than either RSV (1.9 per 100,000) or influenza (0.5 per 100,000).  

The rates of all three — COVID-19, influenza and RSV — remain much lower than this time last year when both the RSV and flu seasons peaked early, before Thanksgiving. It is unlikely that we’ve reached the peak for this season given the relatively low levels of activity so far. 

RSV: On the rise, especially among the youngest 

While RSV-related hospitalizations are growing overall, the increases are most dramatic among those most susceptible to the virus: young children. In the Twin Cities, 47 of the 58 RSV hospitalizations during the week starting Nov. 12 were among those age 0 to 4.  

The hospitalization rate among those youngest Twin Citians was 11.7 per 100,000. That is notably higher than the overall rate of 1.9, not to mention the rate of 0.7 among the other group most vulnerable to RSV, those 65 years of age or older.  

Among the concerns with the current increase in RSV: The data suggest the state may soon run out of pediatric hospital bed capacity. Department of health data show there are currently only 36 unoccupied pediatric beds in the state, and only 14 in pediatric intensive care units. Those beds will quickly fill if new RSV admissions for children, currently around 60 per week, get anywhere near last year’s peak of 155 per week.

The CDC recommends RSV immunization for those who are 32-36 weeks pregnant, babies up to 8 months old whose mother did not receive the vaccine and those age 60 and older. RSV vaccination rate data are not readily available, but as of Nov. 25, 14.8 percent of those 60 years of age or older had received an RSV vaccine. This is notably lower than the 60 percent of those in that age group who said they would get vaccinated according to a survey conducted by KFF in early September. 

Influenza: Picking up, but rates are still low in Minnesota 

This year’s influenza season is under way. According to the CDC’s latest “FluView” update, nationwide flu-related hospitalizations doubled over the past three weeks. The same report indicates that flu activity remains relatively minor in Minnesota. In fact, the state is one of only five in the brightest green “minimal” category, down from 12 states two weeks earlier.  

Minnesota Department of Health data show that the flu is among many racial and ethnic health disparities in the state. In the height of last year’s flu season, flu-related hospitalization rates reached over 20 per 100,000 among both Black and Indigenous Minnesotans, compared to nine per 100,000 among Asian Minnesotans, eight per 100,000 among white Minnesotans and less than three per 100,000 among Hispanic Minnesotans. That same pattern is already beginning to emerge this year. 

Although the CDC’s state-level data on flu vaccination currently lags back to mid November, at that time Minnesota’s adult vaccination rate, 43 percent, was somewhat higher than the national rate of 37.5 percent.

COVID-19 continues its upward creep, especially among older Minnesotans 

After a downward blip during Halloween week, the number of COVID-19-related hospital admissions has climbed back up. The preliminary count for the week ending Nov. 21 is 337. This is likely to be revised upward as data are firmed up, but that number is the highest level of weekly COVID hospital admissions since February. 

Importantly, the climbing number of hospital admissions in Minnesota is hitting older adults particularly hard. While a disproportionately high number of older adults have ended up in the hospital due, at least in part, to COVID-19 throughout the pandemic, that is particularly the case now.  

For example, while only seven percent of Minnesota’s population is age 75 or older, that age group made up 36 percent of those hospitalized at the pandemic’s first peak in late Nov. 2020. Then, in the Jan. 2022 peak about 20 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 were 75 or older. For the past several months about half of the state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations have been among those age 75 or older.  

As a result, the weekly COVID-19 hospitalization rate for Minnesotans age 75 or older is now more than 40 per 100,000; this is at least six times the rate of the general population in Minnesota and similar to the rates for that age group throughout much of 2022. It is also higher than the 30 per 100,000 weekly COVID-19 hospitalization rate for Minnesotans at the very peak of the pandemic. 

Perhaps in response to those impacts, uptake of the new COVID-19 vaccine is highest among older Minnesotans: 44 percent of those age 65 or older, compared to 14 percent for Minnesotans of all ages. As reported by Axios Twin Cities, the latest CDC data show that uptake of the new COVID vaccine, 27 percent of adult Minnesotans, is among the nation’s highest (the national rate is 16 percent). 

The latest data from the University of Minnesota’s Wastewater Surveillance Study shows continuing increases in COVID-19 levels, which increased roughly 21 percent statewide when comparing the most recent week, Nov. 22, to one week earlier.  

COVID-19 levels in wastewater continue to rise 

The wastewater levels in all seven of the study’s regions increased or remained relatively flat over the prior week. And the North West, South West and Twin Cities regions each saw increases in their COVID-19 levels above the statewide average. 

Over the prior month, the study’s seven regions experienced solid increases in COVID-19 levels. The statewide average increased by 70 percent. COVID-19 levels in the North West region increased by over 100 percent, the only region to more than double their COVID-19 levels. 

Statewide COVID-19 levels in wastewater are at their highest point in six months, but they remain below where they were in the first three months of the year.  

Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their reporting on COVID-19 wastewater viral activity. As of Nov. 25, Minnesota is one of 10 states in which the viral activity is deemed “very high” by CDC. However, this designation is based on preliminary data, so they should be seen as an indication of trends but not the final word..  

With the continuing increases in wastewater levels seen in the University of Minnesota’s study, as well as increasing hospitalizations due to COVID, RSV and influenza, Minnesotans may want to take precautions during the upcoming holidays, including testing for COVID-19 before gathering, getting up to date on vaccinations, and even consider masking especially in large, indoor gatherings or when around people with higher risks.  

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