Since Jan. 7 the Flathead City-County Health Department has been out of COVID-19 test kits to distribute. Despite that shortage, the number of reported cases in the county is climbing rapidly as the omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to spread in Montana and in Flathead County.
The health department went into last week planning to request 1,000 kits from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services and ended up receiving 700. By Jan. 6 the number of tests the health department had on hand was running low and by the next day the last test had been handed out.
Health Officer Joe Russell said he’s been in contact with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, and that the county could receive more tests from the state agency later this week, but that DPHHS had run out of the tests.
“The demand is significant,” Russell said.
The health department on Jan. 10 was also working on processing another 1,000 positive tests reported to them by the state from last weekend. Those numbers suggest to Russell that despite the shortage at the health department the county has more latent testing capacity than he expected.
The 1,000 cases reported over the weekend won’t be reflected on the state case mapping and information website until the health department has pulled them out of the database and created files for them. That process was ongoing on Jan 10. Some people are also not reporting the positive results of at-home test kits, which is further contributing to the undercount.
Russell said the number of active cases in the county exceeds the 677 active cases shown on the state website. “There’s so many more than that,” Russell said. He estimated that the county is probably averaging somewhere between 200 and 300 cases a day right now.
In Flathead County 225 people have died as a result of COVID-19. Statewide there have been 2,921 COVID-19 deaths.
“I guess my biggest concern is, the best two tools in the proverbial scabbard that we have are vaccination and early detection and isolation,” Russell said. “If one of those is gone, then we’re not going to detect the amount of disease in the community that we did last week. The way this new variant is running through, that could just accelerate the amount of cases that we have.”
As far as whether the new case numbers are creating any trends in county hospitalizations, Russell said he was aware of 22 people with COVID-19 receiving treatment at county hospitals, compared to recent daily averages in the mid to upper teens. “It’s not enough information to make it a trend,” he said.
The increase in testing demands is also being seen at the three sites operated by Kalispell Public Schools. Assistant Superintendent Matt Jensen said on Jan. 10 that demand began to rise in the last week, and that the sites were averaging about 150 tests a day.
“We have more than that already so far today,” he said.
The school district test sites use the Binax Now rapid antigen tests provided by the state, which are different than the at-home tests the health department has relied on from DPHHS, and also allocated differently from a larger supply. According to Jensen the school district has been able to keep ahead of supply issues.
“We’ve run low a couple of times, but so far we haven’t run out of any tests,” he said.
The process has been streamlined and involves QR codes for registration. Jensen said that staff will take samples, run them for results, and then parents will get a text notification when results have been entered.
“What we’re seeing on a pretty regular basis is one child in a family will be symptomatic, so the family will bring their kiddo in and they’ll test positive. Then the family chooses to have the rest of the siblings stay home for a couple days, and then they usually end up testing positive,” Jensen said. “If testing wasn’t available, all of those kids would be going to school.”
He added that the speed of the tests, with results in about 15 minutes, is also something that’s important for parents who might otherwise have to wait days for results.
“It’s keeping our kids healthier, and it’s allowing us to keep our kids in school more often.”