Flathead currently has no confirmed active COVID-19 cases

As of Tuesday morning, data from the Flathead City-County Health Department showed Flathead County currently has no active confirmed cases of novel coronavirus.

Since the beginning of Montana’s outbreak, the county has seen 37 cumulative positives with two of these resulting in fatalities — both individuals over the age of 65 with underlying health conditions — and the remaining 35 have “recovered.”

The term “recovery” refers to a case that meets the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s criteria for someone to be released from isolation. According to health department officials, there are two methods to determine a recovery.

For the majority of patients, a non-testing criteria is used, in which a person must go 72 hours without a fever and without using fever-reducing methods; it has been seven days since the onset of symptoms and there must be an improvement of respiratory symptoms. The second testing criterion follows the same fever guidelines as the first, but other symptoms must improve as well and the individual must receive two negative coronavirus tests in a row, 24 hours apart.

As of Monday, Flathead County has also gone three weeks without a new confirmed case, with the last positive being reported on April 13. And bearing in mind there are likely more positives in the area that have either not come forward for testing or have not been able to be tested due to stretches of low testing supplies at the state, the health department’s data offers other insights to Flathead County’s 37 positives.

According to the results of health department investigations, 17 of the area’s positives had made contact with another person with the virus, 12 were associated with travel and for eight of the individuals, staff were unable to determine the source of infection. This prompted health department officials in early April to announce possible evidence of community spread, meaning the unsourced positives may had contracted the virus while out in public.

Of the 37 positives, seven individuals were over the age of 70. The majority of positives, about 44%, were between the ages of 40 and 59. Twenty of the positives were female and 17 were male.

In total, Montana has reported 456 confirmed cases out of 15,272 tests conducted. Of these, 410 have recovered and 16 have died, but in the last week the state has only confirmed six new positives statewide. On Tuesday morning, statistics from the state’s Coronavirus Task Force were showing Montana currently has only six active hospitalizations.

Reporter Kianna Gardner can be reached at 758-4407 or kgardner@dailyinterlake.com