(upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator 2] Coming to you from Rochester, Minnesota.

(upbeat music) RTown.

(upbeat music) - We are checking in today with program manager, Meghan Shearson, and Mike Nila, associate director of public health, in Olmsted county public health to get us up to speed on what we need to know about the latest surge in COVID-19 cases in our community and what we can do to keep ourselves and our communities healthy during this time.

Welcome to RTown.

- Thank you.

- [Meghan] Thanks for having us.

- So, I think a lot of folks are hearing a lot.

I mean, we're hearing about the cases nationally, locally.

Can you tell us a little bit about what the positivity rate currently is in our county and how does this rate compare to what we've seen before?

- I can take that one.

So right now our positivity rate is around 30%.

So that means one out of every three tests are coming back positive.

Typically we wanna see that positivity rate around like 5%.

So that just even shows you right there, like the sheer volume.

I will also say we have not seen testing volumes like this the entire pandemic.

Our healthcare partners are processing over 10,000 tests on Olmsted county residents alone for the last few weeks.

Typically, it's been around four to 5,000.

So we just even looking at some of that much higher.

We thought we were hitting some of our pandemic highs in November when we hit a thousand cases.

On the past few weeks we've been 1000 plus then the week after that we were 3000 plus.

And then this week we're close to 2,700 cases.

So there is just a ton of COVID in our community right now, but we also know that's an under-representation because of all the actual testing going on.

So I think we've not seen this the entire pandemic.

It feels like week after week, it's new record of positivity rates, new record of cases, new record of hospitalizations.

- Yeah, I think that's certainly gives us a good sense of just how different it is and how staggering it is as well.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the impact that the surge is having on our local healthcare system and our capacity at this point?

- Yeah, so what we can talk about is what we know from our end of Olmsted county residents.

So it's important to know we have two great healthcare facilities in our community and they are kind of a hub for a lot of other regions or other counties in our community.

So we can talk about what we know from an Olmsted county perspective, but it's not necessarily the full picture, if you will, of what's happening.

What we know is for the past few weeks, we've seen our hospitalizations increase usually by three or four every week.

So we're actually hitting pandemic high hospitalizations.

So for this, for example, this past week we had 48 people in the hospital and three in the ICU.

So I wanna talk a little bit about the ICU because that's maybe if we wanna call it a bright spot.

As our hospitalizations have been going up, our ICU utilization has remained stable.

So that's a positive.

So we also know that we're not seeing this strain maybe like we're seeing on hospital beds in the ICU.

We knowing to talk about- - Megan, can I ask you a follow-up question to that?

Does that sort of that stability mean that are the cases as serious as they were before?

Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

- So there's a lot of factors that go into it.

And even talking with our healthcare partners sup, what we see as an ICU case is typically much more severe than a lot of other hospitals.

So we have just such a high level of care that we also haven't seen the high ICU rates that others have because the really, really sick are going there.

But we are seeing though with our hospitalizations is people bopping kind of into the ICU and going out just to a hospital bed and then kind of coming back.

So there's a little bit of fluidity happening there.

The narrative that has been with Omicron is it's not as severe, but we are seeing though, is it is driving a lot of people to the hospital, especially those aren't vaccinated, but then also those who potentially are vaccinated, just have really a lot of underlying health conditions.

And that's who we're seeing in our ICU.

- So we have one minute before the break here, can you just talk to us a little bit about the factors, some of the factors that are impacting the current surging cases.

- Omicron hit at like the worst time possible, I think for everyone because it happened right during... A, it came much earlier than I think we were all anticipating and B it happened right during all the holidays and it's starting to get colder.

So we saw a lot of people gathering together, and a lot of them tried to do all the safety precautions, but because of Omicron and just how infectious it is, you could do all what you can, but there's still opportunities for that infection to happen.

- Yeah, definitely.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And we will be right back with you after the break.

(upbeat music) Be sure to stick around, we have much more coming your way on RTown.

We visit Treedome, a new storefront vinyl shop and production studio on Broadway.

We also continue the conversation with Olmsted county public health.

But at first we head to Rochester Art Center to explore the homecoming queen exhibit inviting visitors to explore the wonderful world of Utica queen.

Star of season 13 of RuPaul's Drag Race in this week's RCulture segment.

(soft music) - My name is Brian Duckerschen, I'm a board member here at the Rochester Art Center.

And I am one of the curators of homecoming queen, the wonderful world of Utica queen, an exhibition that is now on display here at the Rochester Art Center.

(soft music) Utica queen is the drag persona of Ethan Mundt.

Ethan was born and raised in Utica, Minnesota town of less than 300 people, about 30 miles east of Rochester.

And he started getting into drag when he was in college at Hamlin university in St. Paul and began his professional drag career in the twin cities.

Last year, he got on to the season 13 of RuPaul's Drag Race, where he quickly won the hearts and affection of people around the world.

- She's thickening.

- All of the costumes that Ethan wears are made by himself and his team.

So as soon as people come into the exhibition, this is the first piece they see, this is Ethan's promo look.

So Andre Grace, when the cast of each season is announced, the show releases a bunch of publicity photos and promo videos of the contestants.

And so this is actually a really good example of a lot of the themes within which Ethan works.

So you can tell there's a little bit of a milkmaid farmer's daughter thing going on here.

A lot of Ethan's drag, he does reference growing up on a farm in Utica.

You'll also see that the color is split between the blue and the yellow.

Ethan is a really big fan of exploring themes of duality.

And then you'll see at the top, there are three hats sort of stacked.

He also likes to work in triplicate, which is actually a reference to the holy trinity.

Ethan was raised a Seventh Day Adventist.

So this is cathedral, which is inspired by religious architecture.

When I learned that Ethan conceives designs and sows all of his costumes himself, that's when I really was interested in approaching our executive director about mounting this exhibition.

So this is without a doubt, the most important piece in the exhibition.

So this is sleeping bag.

This stunning piece was made out of five sleeping bags.

Ethan made it in just one day.

He made it in about eight hours.

(soft music) Those perhaps of a certain age may remember back on the Carol Burnett show, there was her very famous parody of gone with the wind called, "Went with the Wind".

And there was a scene in which she referenced the character of scholared O'Hara making a dress out of the curtains at Tara, the Southern plantation.

- What brings you to Tara?

(audience laughing) - [Brian] And so this is Ethan's interpretation of Carol Burnett.

Drag is about self-expression.

It's about creativity.

It's about not taking the world and its rules too seriously.

It's about breaking those rules.

It's about stepping outside of gender norms and poking fun at gender norms.

It's about artistry, it's about performance.

It's about community, it's about laughter.

All of these things, which I think in our current day and age, we could all use a little more of.

- [Narrator 2] For more information about this story and other RTown features, connect with us on Facebook, twitter @ksmq#RTown or ksmq.org/Rtown.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Danielle Teal, your moderator with RTown spotlight.

This segment covers organization's events and happenings across Rochester as well as really important information like today we're gonna talk about taxes.

I know that could be a stressful topic.

We'd like to thank 125 Live for hosting today's show.

Today we have David Oates with volunteer income tax assistance program.

Welcome David.

- Welcome.

- And very excited to have you on because taxes, everybody gets stressed out just by the word, I think.

I know that I am always an anxious anticipation of it.

So let's dive in a little bit about the taxes for 2021 and what people should be aware of that is a little bit different this year.

- Sure, as always, taxes are an opportunity to sort of look at your finances at all.

That's also an opportunity to obtain the credits that people are allowed.

And a lot of changes this year there's play for significant credits that they wanna take advantage of by filing for an economic impact payment of $1,400 last spring.

If you didn't get that, you could get now by filling.

There's a big change in what's called the child tax credit, they increased it from $2,000 up to $3,600, and now it's all refundable.

And so a lot of people wanna file for that.

Some of you might've gotten that in advanced payments, starting in July, and you need to file the return to get the balance of your credits.

And then big changes that the child, the dependent care this year, daycare expenses, they increased the expenses from 3000 to 8,000 and that can now be recyclable.

So a lot of reasons why people would want to file, even if they don't have any taxes to pay.

And one final change is for people over the age of 64, who're still working.

Now they qualify for what's called an earned income credit.

And I looked at an example, somebody made $10,000 with no other income and they're getting back to $1,500.

So there's a lot of reasons to file besides paying uncle Sam their fair share.

- Right, and people shouldn't get too scared by it because there are resources available to help even if it is confusing and there's not clear understanding what to do.

And what ways can people look into getting those resources?

- Our VITA program involves over 75 volunteers that are there to help people who have lower or are moderate income people, 75,000 or less, who otherwise might struggle.

And they could call 211, which is the United Way referral area and get connected.

We offer six sites, we also go to 14 senior sites and we can't do it without these 75 volunteers.

And also our program sponsors are 125 Live and Salvation Army and all the wonderful sites that allow us to come in and help these people.

- That's wonderful, David, you all are doing important work, so thank you so much.

- We enjoy doing it, we're wired that way and we like taxes.

- I know, right?

Well, thank you so much for being on the show.

- All right, thank you Danielle.

(upbeat music) - Again, this is Michael Wojcik with your RTown rundown.

As you are likely well aware, we are in the midst of a pandemic and as such, the city of Rochester has put in an indoor masking requirement in public places in place through at least February 7th.

This was affirmed by a super majority 61 vote of the Rochester city council.

In addition, both Olmsted county and Mayo clinic has expressed support for this policy.

And we just ask that you continue to do your small part in keeping others safe.

Additionally, COVID tests.gov is not available.

You can go to that website and get COVID tests delivered to your home for free.

Coming up on February 1st, it's caucus season in Minnesota, and irrespective of your political affiliation, you can go to the secretary of state's website and find a tool that will tell you where your caucus or whatever party you're interested in is going to be held at this year.

Coming up at Rochester Arts Center on Saturday, there is a book launch and fundraiser with Boomi Mackelroy, and that's going to be again, 2:00 PM at the Rochester Art Center.

If you're into monster trucks, 2X extreme racing presents monster truck chaos 2022 at the Mayo civic center.

There'll be candlelight hikes coming up a couple more times this year at Quarry Hill, the next one is going to be on January 28th.

That's a great outdoor activity, and you can purchase tickets with different starting times to reserve your spot.

Radium Girls is a production being put on by the repertory theater.

There's a show on the 22nd and additional show is coming up as well.

So if you're interested in that those tickets are available.

And finally, the Rochester Grizzlies, our amateur hockey team is sitting in first place in their division with over 30 games played.

They'll be home both this weekend and next week, if you wanna catch some amateur hockey action, and that's just a little bit of what's going on in Rochester.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Danielle Teal with RTown walkabout and we're talking to our guests remotely.

I'm in my house and Nate Nelson is in a brand new location fund store.

He's gonna dig into it a little bit, it's called Treedome and it's a creative studio and shop downtown.

Hey Nate, how's it going?

- Hey, Danielle, how's it going?

- [Danielle] Saw all the photos on Facebook from start to finish.

- Yeah, we used to be located downtown in Wynonna for about five years.

And then we moved up here back in March and got work renovating the old big Brad space here into the shopping it is today.

- What inspired you to move locations and to basically set up shop in Rochester then?

- I'm a videographer and photographer by trade.

So I do a lot of like music videos and live sessions and shows and I've got a lot of bands and a lot of that involves travel.

So we were in Wynonna I'd be traveling to Minneapolis, to Rochester, to Madison.

Being located in a little bit more of a central location in Rochester, made it easier for us.

But from a shop perspective, there's a lot more people here than there are in Wynonna.

But we're moving here and we're like, well, we need to have a studio, we need to have a space.

We decided to kind of just go full throttle with the shop stuff.

- Very cool, well, we would love to scope out the store with you if you could give us a little tour.

- First thing is the jazz records, so we have them all organized by genre.

We've got a bunch of old stuff like pop, rock, hip hop, metal.

Local music is a big thing for us because we work with so many local bands.

From the vintage, that's kind of the other big half of what we do and then we also do Tik Tok.

- That's really awesome.

And did you just loop me into the young crowd?

I think you did.

- Come stop by.

- Perfect, sweet, I will stop by.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

- Yeah, of course, thanks for having me.

- Thank you.

This is Danielle Teal with RTown walkabout, - Welcome back everyone.

We are spending the half hour talking to program manager, Megan Shearson and Mike Mila associate director of public health Olmsted county public health about COVID-19 and the current surgeon cases.

Before the break, we were talking just about kind of getting our heads around what the situation is and how different it is from anything we've seen before.

And the next thing I wanna talk about is vaccination.

And what percentage of the county is fully vaccinated and what is the county doing to continue to facilitate boosters?

We know that that's a big thing as well as full vaccination for both children and adults.

- Olmsted county, at least as a county, When we look at statistics have led or been like the second leading county in the state, in terms of vaccination rate.

We fully understand that we benefit greatly because of the health systems we have here.

Early on they were in the first priority groups.

We had a lot of healthcare workers get vaccinated, and that has followed on through with continuing to vaccinate the population.

Vaccine is one of the best tools we have in the toolbox right now to fight this pandemic.

We're so glad to be able to continue doing that work.

Olmsted county public health has been hosting vaccine clinics since the beginning of 2021.

We've been coordinating with our healthcare partners so that they're able to provide in the locations and the way that is best for them and their patients and customers.

And on our side in public health, looking at opportunities in the community for populations or groups or businesses, for example, that maybe need a type of service that we could provide going out on site or just within the capacity that we have too.

So it's been a coordinated effort.

We are so grateful for our healthcare partners and the ability to coordinate that.

We know that vaccinations continue, and it's really important that we continue providing it and helping people understand how important it is to get vaccinated.

Right now, kind of more of our targeting that we're trying to do is get into, like for example, schools and make that an accessible route for children, especially the ages five to 11.

We continue though providing vaccine to all ages 12 and older especially boosters in that age group 12 and older.

So we're trying to find a way to get as much vaccine available to the population as possible.

We know that vaccine was very important in protecting against the Delta variant.

We also know now with the Omicron variant, that being fully vaccinated with a booster dose dramatically reduces your risk of severe illness and hospitalization.

So now more than ever with this big rise in Omicron cases, to try to get that vaccine and make it available, we're expecting people are looking at that and if they haven't been vaccinated yet, they are choosing to do that and, or get a booster.

- So the city of Rochester also just issued a masking mandate in public areas.

And we know vaccinations, we know of masking, we've sort of run through kind of like all of the things in the last couple of years that are supposed to help us keep ourselves and our community healthy.

Masking of course, being a big one as well as vaccination.

Can you just remind us of just some quick tips on proper masking and we've all been wearing them, but just kind of remind us as we're sort of kind of gearing up or just sort of in the thick of the storm right now.

- Yeah, exactly.

We recommend kind of as people approach indoor environments, taking a multilayered approach.

Wearing a mask is a very important part of that.

Wearing a close fitting mask, cloth mask is fine.

We talk a little bit about other options, but something that covers your mouth and nose, well-fitting.

And if to the degree possible, you can feel that it's maybe capturing and moving with your breath you know its close fitting.

- Thank you for that guidance and reminder.

I mean, things are changing and I'm sure you're living it.

Things are changing almost on a daily, hourly basis.

Nationally, we now have as of this week, home testing kits available to households.

What guidance can you provide on how to access those and when to use them at home?

- Well, I think it's a great opportunity.

We know that at-home kits are an important part of the solution and making sure people have tools to understand if they're positive for COVID.

The website that you're talking about through the US postal services, COVID test.gov.

I think it's a great opportunity for every household to go online and order that get that four kit or four test kit package, it will be mailed to you.

My wife, in fact just did it for our household and took her 30 seconds she reports.

So I'll get them, I'm gonna believe her.

And I think it's a great way to have that available so that when you're in a situation where you need to know if you've maybe been exposed or you're going to be joining other people that are vulnerable, maybe at risk of a severe illness, or you're going to a gathering or something along that lines, you can know if you are positive and take action accordingly.

- I love how you said it just sort of amassing those tools to empower all of us to stay healthy and keep each other safe.

I think that's really important as we are sort of, I think that there is a lot of fatigue around it and a little bit of burnout around just hearing the same thing and the waves keep coming in.

So I think thank you so much for sharing that and just reminding us of all the tools we do have at our disposal to be able to get through this.

Is there anything else that you'd like the community to know about the current COVID situation and just resources that are available and just any way that the community can connect and can stay up to date with the efforts of the county?

- I can touch on some of the resources too.

So Olmsted county, our website, has a whole page dedicated to COVID about the current situation.

We've seen where we are for case members, we actually linked to MDH and the CDC.

So you kind of get a nice dashboard all there for the current situation.

We also try to keep it at its most up-to-date around testing and we just added information around at-home testing 'cause I know that has been a big question for our community.

We also talked about vaccine and where you can access information too.

We also just restarted our COVID 19 newsletter that goes through our gov delivery system that you can sign up on the website too.

And that is kind of just a weekly update to provide current situation and just kind of talks through the hot topics of the week, which there can be so many.

But it's just a really good digest of everything that's going on.

And even as it's just more for a reference of like, oh, they talked about masking here and here's a good article around that.

So there's a ton of information that is getting pumped out, but we just try to consolidate that all for our community once a week and those come out on Fridays.

- Well, thank you both so much for joining us.

Thank you for all you're doing to help keep our community safe.

And I'm sure we'll be catching up with you in due time.

- [Mike] Thank you.

And thank you all for joining us today.

For more wonderful content produced right here in Rochester, please be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at #RTown.

I'm Nicole Nfonoyim-Hara, host of RTown, a show about Rochester.

Be well and stay safe and I will see you next week.

(upbeat music) ♪ I'm moving on hey ♪ ♪ Got nothing left to say ♪ ♪ Guess I'll be on my way ♪ ♪ Just saddle up ♪ ♪ I'm moving on hey ♪ ♪ Got nothing else to say ♪ ♪ Guess I'll be on my way ♪ ♪ Just saddle up ♪ ♪ I'm moving on hey ♪ ♪ Got nothing else to say ♪ ♪ Guess I'll be on my way ♪ ♪ Just saddle up ♪ ♪ I'm moving on up ♪ ♪ I'm moving on.

♪ (soft music) - [Narrator 1] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.