Gov. Tim Walz projected that Minnesota’s COVID-19 death toll would reach 1,000 by the end of May at the current pace as he and state health officials detailed a new plan to safeguard people living in long-term care facilities.

Tim Walz

They also braced Minnesotans to expect more cases and deaths across the state, and noted the disease is falling harder on people of color. The announcements came as Minnesota hit two more sad milestones: more than 500 deaths and 9,000 cases.

Long-term, congregate care operations have concerned officials since the pandemic began, given the medical vulnerability of people living there. About 80 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in Minnesota involve people living in long-term care. Almost all had underlying health problems.

The new focus includes expanded testing, more personal protective gear for health workers and ensuring “adequate” staffing levels when workers fall ill.

Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm called staffing a “chronic problem” even before the outbreak. Bringing in “strike teams” of health care workers furloughed from other jobs who could fill the breach at a facility in need is one option under consideration. Walz also suggested National Guard members might be deployed.

“We are still building toward the peak” of overall COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, Malcolm said of Minnesota’s epidemic. “We are on the steep part of the curve and we’re just going to expect to see more and more cases each day. As we test more, we will find more.”

Said Walz: “We may be one of the last states to peak. But we’re going to peak.”

Also on Thursday, Walz hinted that more latitude for retail businesses was coming, as he acknowledged the seeming unfairness that a small-town retailer would have to stay closed while a big-box store competitor nearby was allowed to stay open.

“I think they’ve done a heck of a lot of work towards that,” he said.

African immigrant health care workers hit hard

The coronavirus is falling disproportionately on people of color in Minnesota, Malcolm acknowledged. Case rates among black Minnesotans are twice their proportion of population as a whole and three times the hospitalizations compared to white population, she noted.

Similar worrisome trends can also be seen in the illnesses among care workers in congregate care facilities. Malcolm said the workforce in those facilities was about 74 percent white, 19 percent black and 5 percent Latino. But among those workers testing positive, 38 percent were white, 43 percent black and 6 percent Latino.

African immigrants make up a “critical part of the workforce,” Malcolm said. “We can see with this data that they are being quite disproportionately affected as well.”

Of Minnesota’s total positive tests for COVID-19, 1,205, about 13 percent, have been health care workers, the Health Department reported Thursday.

Meatpacking remains at the center of case jumps

Total confirmed COVID-19 cases hit 9,365, up 786 from Wednesday, the largest single-day jump in cases. It continues a string of days of accelerating case counts as testing for the virus intensifies.

Many of the recent outbreaks outside the Twin Cities metro area are focused around meatpacking plants. Officials have accelerated testing in those hot spots, uncovering more infections.

Southwestern Minnesota’s Nobles County, where an outbreak centered around the JBS pork plant in Worthington, continued to have the largest outbreak outside the Twin Cities and the largest by far of any Minnesota county relative to its population.

About 1 in 20 people in Nobles County have tested positive for COVID-19. In mid-April , there were just a handful of cases. On Thursday, there were 1,153 confirmed cases as testing in the region ramped up.

The JBS plant shut on April 20 and partially reopened Wednesday with expanded hygiene and health monitoring measures.

Similar problems have been reported in Stearns County, where COVID-19 cases tied to two packing plants — Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Cold Spring and Jennie-O Turkey in Melrose — have skyrocketed. An undisclosed number of workers at both plants have tested positive for the virus.

There were 55 confirmed coronavirus cases in Stearns early last week. By Sunday, as testing intensified, there were 589. And by Thursday confirmed cases had jumped to 1,161, surpassing Nobles County.

Kandiyohi County in west-central Minnesota is also seeing cases jump two weeks after officials with the Jennie-O turkey processing plant there said some employees had tested positive for the coronavirus. The county had confirmed three COVID-19 cases back then. On Thursday, the Health Department reported 238 people have now tested positive.