While residents of Todd County remain among the least vaccinated in the state, the picture improved somewhat when the state issued a correction to its data last week.

On Thursday, July 8, the Minnesota Department of Health corrected the vaccination rate in those 16 and older upward from 37.7% to 41.9%.

“This is due to the addition of many residents who were incorrectly assigned to another county when they received their vaccine,” a Todd County news release stated. “The Minnesota Department of Health has been working on solutions to use geocoding to identify and correct county border assignment issues in the Minnesota Immunization Information Connection (MIIC). This issue mostly affected people that live on or near county borders and could result in people being assigned to the wrong county when their vaccine information was entered into MIIC.”

The changes to vaccination rates of individual counties do not affect the state’s overall vaccination rate, which as of Sunday, stood at 65.7% of those ages 12 and older.

“We are pleased to see that our vaccine rates are much higher than had been reported,” stated Jackie Och, health and human services director, in the release. “We are proud of what our community has accomplished in providing access and opportunities for residents to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Up until the correction, Todd County was dead last in the state among all counties in terms of its COVID-19 vaccination rate. At just under 42%, that rate continues to be one of the lowest in the state, although the exact rank was unknown Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon, the health department issued a statement noting its corrections last week were inadvertently overwritten through a technical glitch and geocoding would be reapplied to the county rates. Those corrected rates were expected to be live on the health department’s dashboard later this week.

New COVID-19 deaths

The deaths of two locals because of COVID-19 were reported in recent days.

A woman in her 90s in Crow Wing County died July 4, according to county statistics. And the death of a Cass County resident age 75-79 was reported Tuesday by the health department.

Last week, local health officials registered concern over a cluster of COVID-19 cases found in Cass and Crow Wing counties, all of which were identified as the P1 or Gamma variant originating in Brazil.

Among the 47 cases in both counties, five attended the same Mother’s Day celebration and are believed to have been the source of infection for several other cases in the clusters. However, health officials said the fact that only some but not all of the new Crow Wing and Cass County cases have ties to earlier cases suggests that community spread is occurring in the area.

Most of the cases in the clusters attended gatherings, school or social activities while infectious or were exposed to infectious people. Eight of those counted in the cluster required hospitalization, while one person died.

Despite efforts to provide vaccinations to area residents, health officials said they are concerned the cluster will continue to grow if more residents do not take preventive measures such as getting vaccinated or, if not vaccinated, wearing masks in public and practicing social distancing.

Overall, the rate of new cases in the region continues to be slow.