Rural Minnesota communities need to take additional precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a top White House coronavirus response official said on Sunday, and all Minnesotans should take more care if they choose to meet with family and friends.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, met with Gov. Tim Walz and health care and community stakeholders near the Capitol in St. Paul on Sunday before holding a media availability to discuss the closed talks.
It’s Birx’s latest visit as she travels the country to better understand states’ coronavirus response. She visited North Dakota a day prior and planned to continue through the Midwest in coming days.
Birx said Minnesota has taken strong precautions to stave off the disease, but around the state, not all are abiding by mandates to wear face masks or limiting gatherings. And that could allow the disease to continue spreading in Minnesota, she said.
“Throughout many of the places we have stopped in Minnesota between rural gas stations and urban areas, there is real attention to these mitigation efforts in the urban areas but there really does need to be an improvement in many of the rural areas,” Birx said. “This virus has gotten very much into rural areas, so rural areas have to pay as much attention to this virus as urban areas.”
Birx said state health officials and tribal leaders had asked her for more flexibility in spending federal funds aimed at responding to COVID-19. And she had made the request on behalf of the White House that the state take steps to clamp down on COVID-19 positivity rates in the Twin Cities metro and prevent the spread into neighboring communities.
With fall and winter impending in Minnesota, she said additional compliance with prevention measures could prevent future stay-at-home measures. Birx urged Minnesotans to wear masks any time they meet with family or friends as well as when they enter public spaces. And she said continued social distancing and hygiene measures were critical.
“I know that it’s difficult, I know that people are getting fatigued when it comes to COVID, but together we can make it through these next few months really protecting one another,” Birx said. “The community protects the community by stopping the spread of this virus community by community. It doesn’t spread by mosquitoes, it’s not running around. It happens between us, in human-to-human interaction.”
Walz and Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm on Sunday didn’t provide comment about the visit, though Malcolm looked on during the news conference. Walz has previously criticized the Trump administration for failing to offer states a comprehensive COVID-19 response, leaving states to take on mitigation and treatment efforts on their own.
And while hundreds of Republican delegates and elected officials last week gathered at the White House to look on as President Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination, Birx said her message to all groups was the same: that Americans should take the illness seriously and guard against it.
“We have power against this virus,” she said, “but it requires all of us to exert our power together.”
Sunday’s visit comes after the state on Sunday reported 934 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and two more deaths attributed to the illness, bringing the total number of Minnesotans who’ve perished from COVID-19 and its complications to 1,816.