Sanford Health officials in Bemidji say they are currently seeing high community transmission rates of COVID-19 in Beltrami County and surrounding areas.

But, hospitalization rates are not nearly what they were during the peak of last winter’s wave. According to the CDC, 6.9% of inpatient beds are currently being used by people in Beltrami County with confirmed cases of COVID-19.

“This pandemic is not over, it’s just in a different phase,” says Dr. David Wilcox of Sanford Health. “Early in the summer, we typically had zero to five people in the hospital, now we’re running between five and 10 people most of the time for the last month. We’ve had more employees out with COVID-19 than we had even at our highest surges, and of course, that’s because there’s limited protection out in the community. We don’t have the mandate in masking and public policies that were in place last year.”

Around Minnesota, there are about four deaths from COVID-19 each day. 67 of the 74 deaths so far in the state in August have involved seniors.

By — Lakeland News