Gov. Tim Walz said such a ramp-up of testing could happen through collaboration with Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, but health officials have blamed logistical issues for the slower progress.

“It is a moonshot. We don’t get to the moon overnight,” Dan Huff, an assistant Health Department commissioner, told reporters Tuesday. “We’re doing everything we can to increase capacity as soon as possible.”

However, Huff added, “we’re not where we need to be on testing. … We know this is a ramp-up. This is not something you flip a light switch and it comes on.”

Walz’s current stay-at-home order is set to expire Monday. He has said the testing ramp-up is a crucial part of the effort to restart sectors of the economy safely and move more of Minnesota back to normalcy.

But with the state averaging only about 2,500 daily tests completed the past few days, Huff couldn’t say if the state would be able to double that by Monday.

As testing increases, officials continued to caution the public to expect more big increases in COVID-19 case counts.

Health authorities also continue to say that limited coronavirus testing means that confirmed cases are only a small piece of the disease’s true spread and that a massive ramp-up in daily testing is needed to help manage the spread while reopening sectors of the economy.

Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcom said the state was also working to add contact tracers, who track down those who’ve come into contact with someone discovered to have COVID-19. With state government currently in a hiring freeze, people within the Health Department and local public health units are being trained.

Walz will announce this week whether he’ll continue or end his stay-at-home order that runs through May. The same goes for restrictions on bars, restaurants that have been closed to all but takeout and delivery since mid-March.

Both sets of curbs are due to end next Monday, barring extensions. Even as factory and some office workers return to their job sites this week, Walz has made it clear that places that depend on public crowds, including bars, eateries and big sporting events, will be the last ones to return to normal business operations.

Asked whether Walz’s decisionmaking on the stay-at-home order hinged completely on reaching 5,000 tests per day, Malcolm indicated it wasn’t that simple.

“You know, I can’t say if we’re at 4,500 [tests] he would say ‘no’ and 6,000 he would say ‘yes,’” she said. “I think it’s going to be much more complex than that.”

Virus clusters continue; Trump jumps into meat plant issues

Most COVID-19 deaths involve people with underlying health conditions living in long-term care facilities, which has led to calls that everyone in those operations should be tested. While that’s a laudable goal, Malcolm said, the state is not in a position to do that.

“We’re still in the position of needing to set some priorities for testing,” Malcolm said Tuesday. ”In complete candor it would not be something we would be able to do immediately.”

Officials also cautioned the public to temper expectations of antibody testing that might show an immunity developed in some people to COVID-19.

The research hasn’t been completed yet on the level of COVID-19 immunity in patients who’ve recovered or how long that immunity lasts, said Dr. Ruth Lynfield, the state epidemiologist.

Even for those people who’ve developed antibodies, she said, “we cannot say you are not going to get infected again because we do not know that.”

Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota continues to be the state’s largest COVID-19 cluster outside the Twin Cities. The outbreak there is focused around the JBS pork processing plant in Worthington, which has since closed. Reported cases in the county leaped again on Tuesday to 477.

The jump in cases came a day after Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen made clear the economic woes the state’s hog producers face since COVID-19 concerns shut down JBS as well as the giant Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D.

With those plants down, farmers have nowhere to sell the animals and are starting to destroy them.

Petersen said officials were looking to see if smaller slaughtering operations would collectively be able to handle 100,00 to 200,000 hogs a week. The reality, though, is that thousands of hogs will have to be destroyed before they get to market.

“The decision to euthanize animals is very emotional,” he said. While the food supply is stable, the hog farmers face a “very precarious situation,” he said.

On Tuesday, President Trump signaled he’ll order meat processing plants in the nation to stay open during the pandemic.

The parameters of that order — and whether that meant JBS and Smithfield would have to reopen immediately — weren’t immediately clear.

Asked about the order, Malcolm said she didn’t know the details but that the idea seemed “problematic to say the least” given how the spread of the disease in Nobles County is tied at least partly to the JBS plant.