Missoula Health officials Friday announced the county’s first COVID-related death of a young adult. That death is the county’s 13th COVID fatality in the past six weeks.
To protect the victim’s identity, Missoula County health officials will not release the individual’s vaccination and overall health status. All they’re saying is that the person was a local resident aged 20 to 39.
In her weekly video update, Missoula COVID-19 Incident Commander Cindy Farr said the Delta variant is causing more severe illness in younger, unvaccinated people than the original strain.
“Local data this week shows that cases in zero- to nine-year-olds are the highest they’ve been since the pandemic just started. There are currently 47 cases in that age group as of September 9th. Cases are also higher in 10- to 19-year-olds.”
Missoula health officials reported 114 new COVID-19 cases as of Friday morning. That’s the first time that new cases totaled over 100 in one day since the spike of the Delta variant last winter. Forty local patients are hospitalized with COVID-19, which is just shy of the record set last November.