Vice President Pence to Visit Mayo Clinic Next Week

Vice President Mike Pence will visit Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota on Tuesday, his office announced in a statement.

According to a press release from Mayo Clinic, the vice president will tour facilities that support COVID-19 research and treatment, and speak with staff members before returning to Washington, D.C. later in the evening.

The announcement of Pence’s visit comes just a few days after Gov. Tim Walz revealed that the state will be able to perform up to 20,000 COVID-19 tests per day through a new partnership with Mayo and the University of Minnesota. Mayo Clinic’s national reference laboratory has reportedly conducted 120,000 COVID-19 tests nationwide.

The vice president mentioned the testing breakthrough during the Coronavirus Task Force’s Thursday press briefing.

“Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota announced, along with the state’s healthcare system, the Mayo Clinic, and the University of Minnesota, what he described as a breakthrough for rapid, widespread testing – able to test more than 20,000 people using a molecular test per day,” he said.

Walz was scheduled to participate in a conference call Friday with Pence and the nation’s governors to discuss the progress that is being made on testing.

Pence’s April 28 visit to the state will mark his second trip to Minnesota since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The vice president visited the 3M Innovation Center in Maplewood in early March to discuss its production of N95 respirator masks.

With the increased testing capacity, the Minnesota Department of Health has launched a new website with a list of testing locations and criteria for getting tested. There are more than 120 testing locations throughout the state.

As of Friday, the state had completed 53,787 COVID-19 tests and reported 3,185 positive results. Minnesota has now experienced 221 coronavirus-related deaths and 756 hospitalizations.

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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Mayo Clinic” by Tony Webster. CC BY-SA 2.0.