According to the New York Times, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved the pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, created with German company BioNTech, on Friday for emergency usage on December 11. The U.S. is the sixth country to approve this vaccine. Pfizer will distribute 100 million doses of this vaccine by March 2021, due to a deal with the U.S. government. The vaccine will be distributed to hospitals, frontline workers, and high-risk people first before it becomes available to the general public. The first vaccinations are likely to happen next week.

On the week of December 5 to December 11, Cannon Falls Area Schools saw an additional 2 cases of COVID-19 amongst the staff and 4 cases amongst the student body from the previous week alone. The week of December 5 to December 11 was the second week of distance learning after the decision to switch from a hybrid learning model to the current learning model from the COVID advisory committee. On January 4, 2021, the committee will meet again to make the decision to stay in distance learning or to switch back to hybrid learning.

In Goodhue County, there were 535 active cases of COVID-19 on December 11. There have been a total of 35 deaths due to COVID. There have been an additional 2,546 confirmed positive cases and 11 probable cases. There have been a total of 35 deaths in Goodhue County.

On December 13 alone, there were 2,813 newly confirmed positive cases and 213 newly reported probable cases of COVID-19 in Minnesota according to the Minnesota Department of Health. This includes 25 newly reported positive cases and 2 probable cases in Goodhue County. It is estimated that 2,774,930 people have been tested for COVID in Minnesota since March, some of which were tested multiple times bringing the total amount of tests to 4,933,794. In total, there have been 371,342 positive cases and 10,499 probable cases in Minnesota since early March. There have been 4,462 COVID related deaths since March, with 18 of those reported on December 13. 

According to the Center for Disease Control, “there were 1,469,680 newly confirmed cases from December 6 to December 13 in the United States of America and its territories:. This contributes to the 15,932,116 total cases since January 21, 2020. There have been 16,855 deaths from December 6 to December 13 out of a total of 296,818 deaths since January. The CDC is expecting an increase in both cases and deaths, especially over the holidays.