Incident Commander Sees Fewer Cases but Watches for New Variant

COVID 19 case numbers are falling in Missoula and the City County Health Department is reacting by consolidating its vaccination services at their main building in downtown, Missoula.

Incident Commander Cindy Farr spoke to KGVO News on Tuesday with details.

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“Starting next week on Monday, March 7, we are going to actually not be doing COVID vaccines separately at our West Broadway location,” said Farr. “We'll actually be moving that into our regular immunization clinic operations. We've had a lot of decline in the number of people wanting the vaccine and we really feel like it's at a point where we can really just wrap it into our normal health department operations. So that's what we're gearing up to do.”

Farr said even though COVID numbers are down, that Missoula residents still need to be cognizant and respectful of those that may be more susceptible to becoming infected.

“We've seen many different variants of this disease over the past couple of years,” she said. “While right now we are seeing a decline in those numbers and seeing a lot fewer sick people out in the community, there are still going to be people in the community that are at high risk of having bad outcomes. While we are at a low (in cases) right now it is possible that we could get a new variant that could put us right back into another spike. So we're certainly just keeping an eye on what's going on out there.”

Farr provided an update on cases in Missoula County as of Tuesday, March 1.

“So today, we got 40 new cases, and that puts us at 298 active cases,” she said. “Our incident rate of average daily new cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days is now down to 19. That's going to bounce around a little bit because some days we have really low numbers, and then some days we have days like today where we're getting in 40 or 45 or 50 new cases in a day so that that number might still fluctuate a little.”

Farr provided more details for walk-ins who want to be vaccinated against COVID 19, or to receive a booster.

“We're going to take people as walk ins on Monday evenings from five until seven and we'll still be taking appointments for Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.,” she said. “And then we're also taking walk ins on Wednesdays in the clinic from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but otherwise during any of our regular clinic hours, you can call 258-3363 and they can get you scheduled to get that vaccination appointment for COVID vaccines.”

Farr said as of Tuesday that there were six Missoula County residents hospitalized and six non county residents hospitalized in Missoula facilities.

She said she is very much looking forward to treating COVID as endemic, like the flu, rather than as a pandemic.

The Missoula City County Health Department is located at 301 West Alder in downtown, Missoula.