Norman County Seeing Spike in COVID-19

Ada, MN — Norman County went almost two months without a single confirmed case of COVID-19, but that’s all changed with the highly contagious Delta variant spreading across the country. A few cases had sprinkled in during the month of July and now during this past week, Norman County is averaging two new cases a day. The Delta Variant, while not confirmed but suspected locally, is about twice as contagious the original strain of COVID and 3-4 times as contagious as influenza. Sarah Kjono of Norman-Mahnomen Public Heath says the more transmittable a disease is, the higher the vaccination rate needs to be to slow it down.

Kjono says there’s been a lot of questions around whether or not the Delta variant has a bigger impact on children, but it’s hard to know for sure because that’s the one group who hasn’t been vaccinated and many of the previous COVID mitigation measures have been removed.

Through July 11^th, the Minnesota Department of Health identified just under 5,600 breakthough infections from about 2.95 million vaccinated people for a breakthrough rate of 0.19%. Of those 5,600 cases, 514 were hospitalized and 57 of those died. Kjono says the vaccine is still ultimately the most effective way of staying safe against COVID-19.

The CDC recently released their latest update of counties with what they consider “high” transmission of COVID-19. Norman County, who was in the Moderate category last week, is now one of the 34 counties across the state with high transmission, which also includes Clearwater and Marshall County. Polk, Becker, and Traill Counties have substantial levels of transmission while Mahnomen, Clay and Red Lake Counties are still in the Moderate category.

Listen to the full interview from our COVID-19 Conversation with Sarah Kjono of Norman-Mahnomen Public Health below: