It’s a day every COVID-19 watcher hoped would never arrive. Almost nine months to the day Minnesota reported its first COVID-19 death, the state has marked an awful milestone — more than 5,000 total deaths — on Christmas Eve. November and December were dreadful months, with some 2,500 deaths reported. That’s more than half of all the deaths in the pandemic in fewer than two months. At the same time, there’s reason for guarded optimism. Other key COVID-19 metrics continue to offer definite signs of hope. New daily caseloads are retreating from their late November, early December peaks. Here are Minnesota’s current