Mayo Clinic: 905 staff diagnosed with COVID in past 2 weeks
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — More than 900 staff members in the Mayo Clinic Health System in the Midwest have been diagnosed with COVID-19 over the last two weeks as the virus continues to surge across the region, officials said.
Dr. Amy Williams, executive dean of Mayo Clinic Practice, said Tuesday that the 905 newly diagnosed employees account for 30% of all staff that have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began. And 93% of those with the coronavirus were exposed in the community, not at work, she said.
“It shows how widely spread this is in our communities and how easy it is to get COVID-19 in the communities here in the Midwest,” she said.
In total, about 1,500 Mayo Clinic staff are out due to a COVID-19 diagnosis or exposure, Williams said. That number has been roughly unchanged over the last week, as some staff have returned while others go out.
The health system has Midwest locations in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, but didn’t specify where the affected employees were located.
Reported COVID-19 deaths in Iowa continue to be near-record levels as another 38 people died from the disease caused by the coronavirus.
At 10 a.m. Thursday, the state was reporting 2,102 COVID-19-related deaths, an increase of 38 deaths since the state's tally at 10 a.m. Wednesday, according to the state's Coronavirus.Iowa.gov website. On Wednesday, the state reported 40 deaths, the largest one-day increase since the pandemic arrived in Iowa.
The state was reporting at 10 a.m. Thursday that there are 198,674 confirmed cases of coronavirus, an increase of 4,195 since 10 a.m. Wednesday.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2020/11/19/905-mayo-clinic-staff-infected-covid-19-spreads-across-midwest/6341865002/
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