Analysis shows half of state's counties have reported cases of COVID-19

A statewide interim analysis of the state’s 377 known COVID-19 cases through April 10 has found that about 45 percent of the people diagnosed with the illness have recovered and 53 are considered recovering.

Two percent, or six cases total, have died.

Half of Montana’s counties have reported cases. Toole County has the most deaths at three.

Gallatin County reported the most cases (36%), followed by Yellowstone (15%), Flathead (9%) and Missoula (8%) counties. Most cases are reported in more populous counties. Of the more rural counties, Toole County is particularly impacted by COVID-19, where the illness infected people at a retirement center in Shelby.

Older folks, the study found, were far more likely to be hospitalized.

Up to April 10, 45 persons have been hospitalized and their median age was 66, half of them are between 57 and 77 years old. This compares to those not requiring hospitalization with a median age of 44, where half of patients are between 30 and 59 years old.

It is interesting to note that 77 cases were people between 20 and 29 years of age, or 20% of the known cases. When the disease was first detected in the U.S., it was thought to be an illness of older people.

That proved not to be the case.

The next most common age group infected was 50-59 years old (19%) followed by those who are 60-69 years old (17%). The median age for all cases is 48 years of age with a range between 1-91 years of age. Fifty percent of cases are between 31-62 years of age.

Of all cases, 30% were from traveling to an area that had the illness, 26 percent were community acquired, 19% were contact to a case not in the household and 9% were household contacts.

The disease here infects males and females equally.

The first COVID-19 case was reported on March 11. Since then, the number of new cases has climbed to 377 cases in one month. It took 13 days to reach 100 reported cases. After the first 100 cases, growth has remained steady and increasing by another 100 cases for every five days. However, an even slower rate of growth had been detected for most recent case reports. Reports of COVID-19 continue to increase in Montana, but do not appear to grow exponentially.

In fact, newly reported cases have been dropping — an indication of a “flattening” of the curve.

In Flathead County, more than 40% of 34 cases up to April 10 were from travel.

The study also looked at Gallatin County more closely, which is home to Montana State University and has the most cases at 135.

Of those cases, 95 percent were not hospitalized and 3% that were hospitalized were discharged.

The majority of Gallatin cases (27%) were considered community acquired; however, a significant number of cases (20%) were associated with travel outside of Montana prior to onset of symptoms. In addition, 13% of cases were part of five clusters occurring in different settings. These include a worksite with nine cases; two office settings with two to four cases each; and two social events that contributed nine cases that occurred prior to Gov. Bullock’s stay-at-home directive. While a number of cases were recognized in college students and tourists, it does not appear that spring break or visitors to ski areas contributed significantly to the cases in Gallatin County, the study found.