Flathead County’s Unvaccinated Population Continues to Feel Impact of COVID-19

One hundred and two Flathead County residents have died as a result of COVID-19, including at least 10 in the last three months, as the county’s sizeable unvaccinated population continues to spread the virus, including variants that transmit more easily and cause more serious illness.

The Flathead City-County Health Department (FCCHD) stopped issuing press releases every time a resident died from COVID-19 several months ago, a move Health Officer Joe Russell said he made because the releases were doing little to nothing to slow the spread of the virus, but fatalities have continued to pile up even as confirmed new cases have declined precipitously. Flathead County averaged fewer than nine new confirmed COVID-19 cases per day in June, the lowest monthly average since July 2020.

Nearly all of those positive cases, however, have come from unvaccinated residents. The COVID-19 vaccine has been widely available in Flathead County for months and demand for the vaccine slowed to a trickle weeks ago. The health department held its last vaccine clinic on June 22 although doses are still available through FCCHD, several local pharmacies, and select medical providers. To find a vaccine, visit flatheadhealth.org/covid-19-vaccine or vaccinefinder.org. Through June 30, just 38% of the county’s vaccine eligible population had been fully immunized.

Despite the low vaccine numbers that fall well below the state (46%) and national (47%) rates, Russell said he does not believe the county is at a significant risk for a widespread outbreak like was seen last year.

“There’s always a potential for (outbreaks), especially in social settings. Social settings where you might have an under-vaccinated (group) you could actually see it going from two cases to 20 cases,” Russell said. “But the likelihood that we’re going to see a lot of sporadic transmission is getting lower and lower.”

While the virus is spreading less widely and confirmed positive cases are declining, hospitalizations have remained stable or even jumped, a phenomenon Russell said his department is in the process of studying. The county reported an average of more than six people hospitalized per day in May and June, a significant uptick from April (2.8 per day) and March (1.9), without any corresponding increase in positive cases.

Russell could not speculate on what’s causing the increase in hospitalizations, but said he had “a firm belief we are under-reporting COVID cases.” The county does not regularly provide testing data but Russell wrote in his most recent monthly report to the Flathead City-County Board of Health that the fact that the county’s positivity rate has stayed around 10% of tests conducted is probably the result of fewer tests being done. The county long ago abandoned efforts to conduct contact tracing following positive tests. 

Among the other factors that could be causing hospitalizations to rise is the prevalence of COVID-19 variants in Flathead County. As of June 24, Flathead had reported more variant cases (74) than any other county in the state, the majority of them (57) the so-called U.K. variant. The highly transmissible Delta variant had not been discovered in Flathead County as of this publication, although it was elsewhere in the state. Health experts’ concerns regarding the variants stem from worries over transmissibility and the potential for causing more serious illness.

The risk of the variants, however, is limited almost exclusively to unvaccinated residents. Russell said the COVID-19 vaccines administered in Flathead County have proven to be highly effective at stopping every variant that has appeared thus far, and he expected that would remain true in the future because of the genetic similarities between the variants and the existing vaccines.

“I think that we’re going to continue to see this alignment of vaccine (effectiveness) to variant pretty high,” Russell said. “I think it’s just the unvaccinated population that we need to be concerned with, and it’s the unvaccinated population that is ending up in the hospital.”

More than 13,000 Flathead County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since March 2020, including the 102 who have died. Statewide, COVID-19 has killed a confirmed 1,666 Montanans.