Flathead County Reports Fewer COVID-19 Cases as Hospitalizations Remain High

Weekly COVID-19 case totals have dipped recently but hospitalizations remain high in Flathead County, where the COVID-19 deaths of 25 people were reported between Oct. 29 and Nov. 15.

County data reported Monday by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) put Flathead County’s COVID-19 death total at 199 people, which is the third highest COVID-19 death total of any Montana county.

Statewide the virus is confirmed to have killed 2,490 people and caused 9,550 hospitalizations out of 185,176 cases. From April 1 through Nov. 4 in Montana, 84% of COVID-19 hospitalizations and 77% of COVID-19 deaths have been among unvaccinated people, according to DPHHS data. 

Flathead County on Monday had 65 new cases and 528 active cases, which is the fifth highest in Montana. A recent DPHHS report showed that for the week of Nov. 5, Flathead County reported 405 total cases, which was a decrease of 111 from the previous week. COVID ActNow, a COVID-19 data tracking website, calculated the county’s seven-day average of daily cases to be at 52.7 as of Sunday, compared to 59 the week before and 72.6 at the end of October.

“I don’t know how long that’s going to last,” Flathead City-County Health Officer Joe Russell said last week of the recent downward trend in weekly case totals. “We should see a reduction, and we have seen it over the last, let’s say five weeks, we’ve seen a reduction in incidence of disease. Crystal ball though, does this continue? I can’t tell you it’s gonna continue. It’s just too hard to predict if we’re gonna see a significant uptick when people come together for Thanksgiving.”

Even with some decrease in weekly case numbers Flathead County continues to see a high number of people seeking care at hospitals. Weekly hospital occupancy and capacity snapshot reports from the Montana DPHHS show from Sept. 6 through Nov. 8 Logan Health began seven out of nine weeks with more than 90% of its hospital beds filled.

On Nov. 15 Logan Health had 44 COVID-19 patients, and the hospital was below 90% capacity. Of those patients 36 were not vaccinated. Twelve of the thirteen people receiving intensive unit care that same day were not vaccinated and four out of five people on ventilators had also not been vaccinated.

Logan’s 24-bed Medical/Surgical Extension unit for non-COVID patients on the third floor of the children’s facility has been stood up and ready for patients for about the last month due to concerns about the high number of people seeking care. The hospital has used it for patient care a few times since then, according to Chris Leopold, a communications specialist for the hospital. The unit was originally set up by the state in the event that the hospital might need additional beds. Leopold added that just because the unit is open doesn’t necessarily mean the hospital is at full capacity, but rather it may make sense based on day-to-day operations to use the space.

The county’s average daily hospital census has been at 50.4 COVID-19 patients over the last month, which is a more than tenfold increase from the beginning of July shortly before the Delta variant began to spread rapidly in the county. At that point, the county average daily hospital census for COVID-19 patients was four, according to Russell.

Excluding children ages five to 11, 53% of Flathead County’s population eligible for vaccination has received at least one dose of the free vaccine. DPHHS data shows about 41% of the county’s eligible population is fully vaccinated.

Russell has reviewed some estimates showing that the county’s effective reproductive number has fallen to .76. The effective reproductive number is a calculation estimating how many people in a population become infected from a single positive case.

“One is kind of the Mendoza Line, and right now Flathead County is at .76, so for every one person that’s infected with COVID, .76 are going to get it,” Russell said, using baseball jargon to describe a minimum threshold. Scaled upwards, that means that for every 100 new cases, about 76 more people will become infected in the next roughly five-to-seven day incubation cycle of the disease.

Russell attributed some of the decrease in case numbers to increasing immunity locally between infection and vaccination. People continue to get vaccinated in Flathead County, according to Russell, who said that about every three weeks the percent of vaccinated peopleincreases by one. “I wish we were gaining a percent a week, or 2% a week,” he said.

Now that roughly 6,000 Flathead County children ages 5 to 11 are eligible to be vaccinated, Russell said the county’s vaccination percentage should decrease. The addition of 90,769 children ages 5 to 11 to the state’s eligible population caused the statewide vaccine percentages to drop from 55% to 50% after DPHHS updated its statewide figures Monday.

Flathead City-County Health Department hosted its first vaccine clinic for children in the 5 to 11 age group last Wednesday. A total of 70 first doses of the small dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were administered at the clinic, which took place at the health department. Other local providers are offering the vaccine for young children, including Logan Health, where 48 doses were administered last week. The vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 was granted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approval in early November, after the Food and Drug Administration approved it in late October.