Cascade County added 733 new COVID cases over the last week, a spike from recent weeks, according to the weekly update from the City-County Health Department.

The new case rate is 128.7 per 100,000, the highest rate since the pandemic started in 2020, exceeding the spikes in the fall of 2020 and the fall of 2021, according to data from CCHD.

The case rate is the average of new daily cases over the previous week and is calculated on Wednesdays.

Cascade County COVID case rate spikes

Bowen Trystianson, acting health officer at CCHD, told City Commissioners during their Jan. 18 meeting that there had been two new COVID related deaths over the last week, bringing the total to 285 in the county since the start of the pandemic.

GFPS returning to classrooms Jan. 18

The new positivity rate is 22.4 percent, according to CCHD.

Trystianson told commissioners that omicron appears to be the primary variant in the county now and that infection appears to be spreading quickly, but causing more mild illness.

GFPS waiting until Sunday to determine whether to reopen next week, cases increasing

He said that the local hospitals have COVID patients, but they aren’t needing the same intensity of care as those earlier in the pandemic.

As of Jan. 17, there were 30 COVID patients hospitalized at Benefis Health System. Of those, 12 were vaccinated, according to Benefis. There was one unvaccinated COVID patient in the ICU and none on ventilators, according to the hospital. There were 129 non-COVID patients hospitalized at Benefis, according to the state’s weekly update on Jan. 17.

Cascade County seeing slight uptick in COVID cases

At Great Falls Clinic, there were four COVID and 13 non-COVID patients as of Jan. 17, according to the state report.

Hopefully, Trystianson told commissioners, the cases will level off after this current spike that will likely last a few weeks.

There were 197 breakthrough cases over the last week, bringing the total to 1,721 since February 2021, according to CCHD.

Cascade County COVID numbers remain low another week [Deecember 2021]

Breakthrough cases are those when a fully vaccinated person tests positive for COVID. A person is considered fully vaccinated when they complete the full initial series of a vaccine, which is two doses for Pfizer and Moderna and one dose for Johnson and Johnson.

In Cascade County, a total of 90,147 doses of the vaccine have been administered and 37,098 people, or 49 percent of the eligible population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the state.

Last week, Great Falls Public Schools went remote due to the number of COVID cases among students and staff.

Cascade County COVID numbers continue to decline, lowest case rate since the summer [December 2021]

As of Jan. 10, there were 185 COVID positive students and staff within the district, which at the time, GFPS said was the highest infection rate since the start of the pandemic.

On Jan. 16, the district said it would return to in-person learning on Jan. 18 and there were 170 cases among students and 90 among staff.

As of Jan. 18, there were 264 COVID cases among students and staff, according to GFPS.

The district returned to classrooms on Jan. 18 with a recommendation to wear masks. The district lifted the mask requirement for elementary students on Jan. 3 as the COVID numbers in the district and community declined. The mask requirement had been lifted in middle and high schools in November.