ST. PAUL -- Minnesota continues to ramp up its testing capacity for the coronavirus. A week ago the state was averaging around 1,000 tests per day, Monday the state was able to complete over 2,400 tests.

Infectious Disease Director Kris Ehrsman says this means we're going to continue to see more positive cases being reported.

With more testing, we will see more cases and so I want to lay that out that in the next number of days we are going to continue to see more and more cases, and people should not be shocked.

Assistant Health Commissioner Dan Huff says we're not where we want to be yet as far as testing is concerned. Last week the state announced a partnership with the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic that is expected to get molecular testing up to 10,000 a day.

For now, he says they'll continue to focus testing on hotspots like long term care facilities, food processing plants, jails and prisons, and homeless shelters. Communities of color are also a priority. But, he says they also want to expand their testing to other areas.

Workers in our critical infrastructure, utility workers, transportation workers, our childcare workers, people involved in food production or working in the grocery store, all of these workers are critical to daily functions of our society, and we are prioritizing them for testing as well.

With more positive cases comes more contact tracing, and Huff says they'll have unprecedented levels of case investigators tracking down people who have potentially come in contact with someone who has the virus.

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