A little more than one year into her tenure as the first Black woman to serve as Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health, Dr. Brooke Cunningham is relieved that COVID-19 cases have declined from the pace of previous winter peaks.
Since the coronavirus arrived four years ago, it has taken more than 15,500 Minnesota lives. That’s why the commissioner continues to urge Minnesotans to be vigilant with testing and getting updated vaccines.
“We like to think, we want to think, COVID is gone but people are still getting sick, being hospitalized and, unfortunately, some folk are still dying,” she said.
Commissioner Cunningham, a primary care physician and professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, said that statistics indicate the post-holiday COVID-19 mini-surge has not been as big—or as deadly—as in previous winters.
But she stressed that the newly identified JN.1 variant is transmissible and can spread throughout the community, including to people who are older or immunocompromised who are at high risk for complications.