The big thing you should know about economic recovery in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region for the week of March 8^th.   

This Week’s Big Thing: the dial is turning faster on recovery, thanks to vaccine distribution. Friday morning Governor Walz announced a rollback of COVID restrictions, significantly opening up the opportunity for larger social gatherings in the state. The new measures take effect on Monday (March 15^th) and include capacity limit increases for restaurants and bars (to 75% capacity), gyms and fitness centers (to 50% capacity), and entertainment venues (to 50% capacity). Additionally, the state’s work from home requirement for applicable businesses will be removed, though work from home is still strongly recommended. This is great news for the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector which has been largely sidelined through the pandemic. The announced loosening of restrictions is a result of positive distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations, particularly the milestone of 70% of the state’s senior citizens having now been vaccinated. The announcement also comes on the heels of the CDC issuance of guidelines, stating that fully vaccinated people can visit safely with others, released on Monday. The guidelines signal helpful certainty leading into the spring and summer months as families make plans to visit each other, even if that means travel.  

We’ve known that reopening the economy was going to require a meaningful drop in COVID cases and a meaningful share of the population being vaccinated. Both trends are moving in the right direction, as reflected in the data tracked on the Regional Recovery Hub. COVID-19 cases have continued a downward trend the first two months of 2021 in the MSP region. Average daily cases the first week of March were 9% lower than the previous week and 88% lower from the peak week of cases in November. Case activity has been dropping for many of our peer regions, too. Case activity remains highest in Southern peer regions, including Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth, and lowest in Western peer regions, including Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. The MSP region is in the middle of the peer set with 13 average daily cases per capita last week. You can learn more about COVID case trends by visiting the Regional Recovery Hub.  

Meanwhile, COVID-19 vaccinations are really taking off in MSP and Minnesota. As of March 5^th, 534,652 people, or 15.3% of the MSP population, have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This is a nearly 3 percentage point jump over the week, an uptick in the weekly growth in vaccination coverage from prior weeks. At the state level, 18.4% of the population had received at least one dose by the end of last week. This is the second highest share in our peer set, after Massachusetts. States with the lowest share of vaccinated population are Georgia and Texas.

We’re excited this week to see that the Minnesota Department of Health is now reporting vaccination data by race and ethnicity on the COVID-19 Vaccine Data Dashboard. Data is provided through a partnership with the Minnesota Electronic Health Record (EHR) Consortium as a way to inform strategies to ensure equitable distribution of vaccine to all Minnesotans, particularly communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 as a result of systemic inequities. As of March 10^th, data shows that multiracial and Hispanic Minnesotans are experiencing the largest disparities in vaccination rates across all age groups, and the share of adults having received at least one dose of vaccine is higher among white Minnesotans than every other racial/ethnic group.

The state of Minnesota has detailed several strategies it plans to implement in order to improve equitable vaccine distribution, including partnerships with Federally Qualified Health Care Centers, which are vaccinating indigenous and communities of color at significantly higher rates than other sites, expanding vaccine to more community pharmacies and community vaccination sites, and deploying mobile vaccination unites to hard to reach populations.

The Regional Recovery Hub tracks COVID-19 case and vaccination trends weekly, including a depth of analysis on how these trends are impacting the pace of economic recovery. We’ve watched over the last several months how state restrictions to control the spread of COVID have impacted employment and small businesses. We’ve also watched how there has been little improvement in metrics tracking travel and movement while many workers in the region continue to work remotely. With further rollbacks of restrictions and increasing vaccination rates we expect to start to see some movement in some of these metrics that have been sitting idle. This week’s announcement from Target that they will be consolidating their downtown Minneapolis office footprint is an early sign of what the next phase of recovery could look like. The flexibility that remote working has offered workers has changed expectations for the post-COVID workplace and we expect to see an impact on changing real estate demand. The GREATER MSP Partnership is tracking this and other signs that the regional economy is transforming and will look different moving forward. If you are interested in hearing more stories of transformation visit www.msptransforming.com.