State Removes Fergus County Case from COVID Tracker
Why is the state telling us that there is a COVID-19 case in Fergus County, Montana when that person hasn't been in Fergus County, and won't be back in Fergus County anytime soon? That was one of the questions we talked about Monday.
The State of Montana has now officially dropped the Fergus County case from their COVID-19 case count in Montana. Plus, the total number of active cases in the state has now dropped all the way down to 30 according to the state's website late Tuesday morning. You'll also note from the above screenshot that there are no active cases of the coronavirus in Northeastern Montana.
Why did the state remove the previously listed Fergus County case from their website? Here's the note that was attached to the latest update from the Coronavirus Task Force:
Users may notice that the overall COVID case number has decreased by one since yesterday's report. After a thorough public health investigation, Montana public health officials have determined that a case thought to be from Fergus County is not a resident of Montana and the patient has not been in Montana for nearly a year. Since this case poses no known risk to residents of Montana, it has been removed from the count.
You may notice that many news outlets are reporting the total COVID-19 case count which is at 456 cases as of Tuesday morning. However, as we told you on Monday, the state is now prominently featuring the number of active cases thanks to the urging of State Sen. Majority Leader Fred Thomas (R-Stevensville).