COVID update: 2 more deaths, major quarantine at Polson schools

Lake County reported 58 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and two virus-related deaths during the week of Nov. 17-24, according to Lake County Public Health.

The death of a man in his 80s was announced Nov. 18, followed by the death of a man in his 70s on Friday. As of Tuesday morning, there have been 12 virus-related deaths reported in Lake County. Additional details on the deaths are being withheld to protect the privacy of patients and their families.

Seventy-seven new cases were confirmed from Saturday through Monday, for an average of about 25 cases per day over than span.

Ten county residents were hospitalized with virus-related issues on Tuesday, a decrease of five cases from the previous week.

The state’s latest data on schools, updated Nov. 18, reports a total of 89 cases across all districts and at Salish Kootenai College since the school year began. That’s an increase of 25 cases over the previous week. The school data is available at the Department of Health and Human Services website, dphhs.mt.gov, and is updated each Friday.

The latest report doesn’t reflect new cases announced this week by the Polson School District, which recently began sharing COVID-19 information on its website. The district reported a positive case Monday at Polson Middle School, and another Tuesday at Polson High School.

The district had seen its total number of quarantined students drop to 12 as of Nov. 16, but that number shot up to 106 by Tuesday morning following the two latest confirmed cases.

On Tuesday the state reported 57,504 total confirmed cases, 974 of them new for the day, and 630 total deaths in Montana.

At least 258,000 Americans had died from virus-related complications as of Tuesday, according to The Washington Post’s coronavirus tracker.