Cascade County added 946 new COVID cases over the last week, according to the weekly update from the City-County Health Department.

The new case number is higher than current infections, according to CCHD.

“With a significant decrease in infections this week, our staff had more time to open and immediately close a backlog of January-February cases from the omicron outbreak. We are all caught up now, and you should start seeing a significant decrease in case numbers next week,” according to CCHD.

Bowen Trystianson, acting health officer at CCHD, told the health board during their March 2 meeting, that he expected the numbers to start trending down and hospitalizations have also come down.

“It’s starting to become more of a comfortable environment,” he said.

The total number of confirmed cases in Cascade County since the start of the pandemic is 24,291.

There were two new COVID-related deaths over the last week, bringing the county’s total to 314.

The new case rate is 166.1 per 100/000 which is up over last week, but again, that’s accounted for in the backlog of cases that were addressed this week.

The case rate is the average of daily new cases over the last seven days and is calculated on Wednesdays.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control are using a new metric, the COVID-19 community level, to determine masking recommendations and is no longer basing recommendations solely on the case rate.

“Case rate continues to be a good snapshot of the county’s case load, but community level also factors in symptom severity by considering hospital admissions and bed utilization by COVID patients,” according to CCHD.

Currently, the community level in Cascade County remains high, according to CCHD.

There were 239 new breakthrough cases over the last week, bringing the total since February 2021 to 2,740.

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

As of Feb. 28, there have been 93,856 vaccine doses administered in Cascade County and 37,931, or 50 percent of the eligible population, are fully immunized, according to the state dashboard.

The positivity rate was 9.5 percent, according to CCHD, down from last week.

As of Feb. 28, there were seven COVID patients, one of whom was vaccinated, hospitalized at Benefis Health System, according to the hospital.

One COVID patient was in the ICU and one was on a ventilator, according to the hospital.

There were 153 non-COVID patients hospitalized at Benefis, according to the weekly state report.

At Great Falls Clinic, there were 17 non-COVID and no COVID patients hospitalized as of Feb. 28, according to the state report.

As of March 2, there were six COVID cases associated with Great Falls Public Schools, according to the district.

Superintendent Tom Moore told the health board that the district had lifted the mask requirement on school buses as of the end of February, but they were still encouraged.