ST. CLOUD -- State health officials are urging Minnesotans to stay vigilant as COVID-19 trends continue in the wrong direction due to the delta variant.

State Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm says nearly every Minnesota county is in either substantial or high transmission rate of COVID-19.

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She says the FDA has updated their emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, to allow people who are immune compromised to get an additional third dose of the COVID vaccine.

This is a welcomed development in helping protect some of our more vulnerable Minnesotans. The data has become much more clear in recent months that people who are immunocompromised may not developed a good immune response to the first two dose of the COVID vaccine, so a third dose may help improve their protection.

Malcolm says this is not considered a booster shot and is only available to a certain percentage of people.

She says they are waiting on additional information from the CDC on who is included in this group. It's believed only 2.7% of the state's population would fall under this category.

Thursday the state of Minnesota announced that over 70 percent of Minnesotans 16 years of age and older have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, which leads all states in the Midwest.

 

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