County health officials across Montana report seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases.
“We still are dealing with sublineages of the omicron variant, which is a more contagious variant that's circulating in the community,” Gallatin City-County health officer Lori Christenson said.
Montana state officials latest report shows 719 new COVID-19 cases in Montana in the last week.
“A high transmission, high communicability, because it is pretty infectious. but conversely, it just doesn't cause a severe disease,” Flathead City-County health officer Joe Russell said.
Russell believes vaccination rates are the reason they’re not seeing severe illness. After all over 202,000 more Montanans are fully immunized this year compared with this time last year.
“Even if you're vaccinated, and you get a case, you're likely going to have a mild case, we've said that from day one,” Russell said.
Health departments will continue to encourage vaccinations, testing and people staying home if sick.
“I can't with any certainty tell you what the next few months are going to be like. We've definitely seen an increase in our cases, we're not surprised by that increase. and we're not alarmed at this point in time, either,” Christenson said.
Russell is optimistic cases won’t rise to the level they were previously. Back on Oct. 13 there were 510 active hospitalizations. On May 6, the state reported 24 active hospitalizations.
“We're going to likely see less transmission during these nice summer months where we're outside and we're not in an enclosed environment where it's more likely to see respiratory transmission,” Russell said.