On Thursday, Aug. 26, the North Dakota Department of Health held a virtual town hall updating people on the prevalence of COVID-19 in the state amid the highly contagious delta variant. The department also made public on its COVID-19 Dashboard beginning Thursday the number of North Dakota’s reinfections and breakthrough cases. Throughout the presentation, officials laid out data and examples of the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine, encouraging people to get vaccinated and discouraging them from solely relying on building COVID-19 antibodies by contracting the virus.

“To get immunity, taking your chance with the virus is a much worse proposition than the vaccine,” said Dr. Paul Carson, an infectious disease specialist who teaches at North Dakota State University, on Thursday. “You will take your chances with long COVID. You will take your chances with hospitalization, and you’ll take your chances with death.”

The state’s rolling average 14-day positivity rate was nearly 6.2%, according to the Department of Health’s latest data. This is higher than the positivity rate at this time last year and is considerably higher than the 1% reported more than a month ago. This increase in rolling positivity rate also comes with a decrease in the number of tests performed, meaning there are likely additional COVID-19 cases prevalent in the state undetected.

The Department of Health presented a plethora of data of Thursday, mainly highlighting the high hospitalization rates among the unvaccinated and how severe symptoms are more likely to occur in people who haven’t been inoculated. Officials presented this data under the notion that the delta variant is highly contagious and the majority of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 are not vaccinated.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that most everyone, if they are not vaccinated and have not already had (COVID-19), are probably going to get this in the next several months or early into next year,” Carson said Thursday. “So, you’re really making a choice of taking the vaccine versus taking the virus.”

North Dakota has found 526 total cases of the delta variant throughout the state, of which 159 were detected in the last two weeks.

Health officials said the positive cases reported in the last six weeks have nearly exclusively been cases of the delta variant. The infection rate of the delta variant is much higher than other strains of the coronavirus. A person infected with the delta variant passes the virus on to approximately six to eight other people on average, health officials said.

Statewide case rates

• NEW CASES REPORTED THURSDAY, AUG. 26: 363
• ACTIVE CASES*: 2,006
• DAILY POSITIVITY RATE: 6.2%
• TOTAL KNOWN CASES THROUGHOUT PANDEMIC: 116,022
• TOTAL RECOVERED THROUGHOUT PANDEMIC: 112,460

*The Department of Health often amends the number of active cases after they are first reported.

North Dakota’s active cases surpassed 2,000 for the first time since December.

Cass County has the most known active cases in the state with 425, following with Burleigh County at 346 cases and Ward County with 215 cases.

Since June 27, there have been 139 cases of reinfection.

Hospitalizations, deaths

North Dakota had 22 staffed ICU beds available throughout the state as of Wednesday, along with 182 staffed in-patient beds. There was one available staffed ICU bed among Bismarck’s two hospitals as of Wednesday. Thirteen staffed ICU beds were available among the three hospitals in Fargo.

Vaccinations

• FIRST DOSE ADMINISTERED*: 342,286 (51.7% of population ages 12 and up)

• FULL VACCINE COVERAGE*: 316,103 (47.8% of population ages 12 and up)

*These figures come from the state’s vaccine dashboard, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes vaccinations performed at federal sites, reports slightly higher vaccination rates.

On Thursday, the Department of Health published on its website published data about breakthrough cases. A breakthrough case occurs when a person tests COVID-19 positive after they are fully vaccinated.

Even though a person can be infected with COVID-19 after they are fully vaccinated, the Department of Health emphasized that those who often experience less severe symptoms have a less likely chance of being hospitalized.

Almost 320,000 North Dakotans have been fully vaccinated, and 0.0332% were hospitalized due to COVID-19, according to the Department of Health.

The chance to become infected with COVID-19 also decreases when a person is vaccinated.

In North Dakota, one in 228 fully vaccinated people test COVID-19 positive, compared to one in 16 people who aren’t inoculated against the virus, according to the Department of Health.

The Department of Health encourages individuals to get information about vaccines at www.health.nd.gov/covidvaccinelocator.

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Readers can reach reporter Michelle Griffith, a Report for America corps member, at mgriffith@forumcomm.com.