What Minnesota’s protests are revealing about COVID-19 spread

Of the 3,200 people tested so far at the four popup sites across the metro, 1.8 percent have tested positive for Covid-19, says Ehresmann. HealthPartners, one of the largest health care providers in Minnesota, also reported to the state that it had tested about 8,500 people who indicated that attendance at a mass gathering was the reason they wanted a test. Among them, 0.99 percent tested positive. These numbers have been one of the few pleasant surprises since the outbreak began, says Ehresmann. “Right now, with the data available to us, it appears there was very little transmission at protest events,” she says. “We’re just absolutely relieved.”

In a handful of other US cities that have rolled out free testing for protest-goers, the first round of results look similarly encouraging. In Seattle, fewer than 1 percent of the 3,000 people tested after attending protests were positive for coronavirus, according to a statement put out by the city’s mayor last Friday. This week, Boston officials announced that 14 out of 1,288 people tested so far were positive for coronavirus, or 1.1 percent. Of course, these are only three cities out of hundreds that have been enveloped in large-scale protests against police brutality and institutionalized racism. Many are not conducting widespread public testing, and so signals of protest-related spikes may take longer to emerge. Additionally, the peak of protests in some cities, like New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, arrived several days after actions in Minneapolis, where the response to Floyd’s death was swift and furious.