Montana COVID cases now as bad as it gets

By Medicine Hat News on October 15, 2020.

Areas of Montana closest to Medicine Hat passed a new milestone in COVID-19 on Wednesday with 200 active cases and three more deaths in Hill County.

That region of about 16,000 people, including the town of Havre, added 36 new cases in statewide numbers published Wednesday morning.

The total active case now sit at 200, while the number of deaths from the respiratory illness now sits at eight.

Those figures are up from 22 active cases on Sept. 17 – equating to a nine-fold increase over four weeks – and the total number of cases statewide have doubled since mid-September.

Montana’s total cases passed 20,000 on Wednesday as 668 new diagnoses were added.

North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana have the highest rates of infection per 100,000 residents over the past seven days in the United States, according to information provided by the U.S. Centre for Disease Control.

By comparison, Alberta with more than four times the number of residents had just under 21,000 total cases as of Tuesday.