Cascade County added 157 new COVID-19 cases this week, according to the Dec. 8 update from the City-County Health Department.

That brings the cumulative total to 16,871 cases in the county.

This week’s case rate is 27.6 per 100,000, which is the average of daily new cases over a seven day period and calculated on Wednesdays.

Cascade County COVID numbers continue to decline, lowest case rate since the summer

That’s up a bit from last week’s case rate of 20.2 per 100,000, but still lower than the 29.3 per 100,000 the week prior.

The positivity rate this week, according to CCHD, is 7.5 percent, which is the lowest rate since July and back in the moderate range.

There were 33 new breakthrough cases this week, bringing the cumulative total since February in the county to 1,306, according to CCHD.

COVID vaccine boosters offered throughout Cascade County, case numbers dropped last week

As of Dec. 6, there have been 82,497 total doses of the vaccine administered in the county, and 35,787 of the eligible population, or 47 percent, have been fully vaccinated, according to the state dashboard.

A breakthrough case is one in which a fully vaccinated person tests positive for COVID-19. A person is considered fully vaccinated when they have the full series of the initial vaccine, which is two doses for Pfizer and Moderna and one for Johnson and Johnson.

As of Dec. 6, there were 17 people hospitalized with COVID at Benefis Health System and of those, three were vaccinated. There were four COVID patients in the ICU, one who had been vaccinated, and three on ventilators, one who had been vaccinated, according to Benefis.

There were two COVID patients hospitalized at the Great Falls Clinic, according to the weekly state report as of Dec. 6.