MN State Sen. wants everyone at long-term care facilities to get a coronavirus test

SAINT PAUL, Minn. – Since Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced a partnership with the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic, the state has double testing to two thousand per day.

Chair of Minnesota’s Senate Family Care and Aging Committee, Republican State Senator Karin Housley of St. Mary’s Point, calls on Walz to implement guidelines for widespread testing at long-term care facilities. She says the state is seeing an unprecedented crisis with almost 80 percent of the state’s deaths being from long-term care facilities and staff isn’t being tested.

The Department of Health says that isn’t possible yet.

“We’re still, as we’re ramping up testing volumes, we’re still in the position of needing to set some priorities for testing. It might be a laudable goal to broader population testing in these particularly vulnerable settings, but, in complete candor, it would not be something we would be able to do immediately with the available capacity,” Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said.

Malcolm says President Trump’s planned executive order requiring meat packing plants to stay open as they’re essential to feed America is problematic and counterintuitive. Minnesota has seen the impacts of the virus in the JBS plant in Worthington. She says plants can see outbreaks and infect many people.