HELENA – Governor Greg Gianforte said during a press conference in Helena on Tuesday starting March 8, Montana will move to Phase 1B + of the state COVID-19 vaccination plan.
Vaccines will be available to Montana residents 60 years of age or older, as well as people between 16 and 59 years of age who have certain chronic or existing health conditions, such as asthma, cystic fibrosis and liver disease.
The governor added that Montana is still projected to move to Phase 1C of the vaccination plan in the spring or early summer.
Gianforte added that the state is “seeing encouraging signs in our vaccine supply”.
He announced on Monday that Montana is scheduled to receive its first doses of Johnson & Johnson’s new COVID vaccine later this week. Montana will receive 8,700 doses of the vaccine in a single dose, and municipalities will begin distributing those doses in the week of March 8. Click here for more details. The state is expected to receive a total of about 60,000 COVID vaccines this week.
The number of Montana residents who received at least one of the two vaccines is 260,705 on Tuesday morning, and the number of people who received both vaccines and are now fully vaccinated is 90,463.
The number of active cases in the state is currently 1,559, according to MTN News, and there has been an accumulated total of 100,587 cases of the virus in Montana. Of the total cases, 97,643 were recovered.
Currently, there are 83 people hospitalized for the treatment of the virus, and the cumulative number of hospitalizations is 4,591.
There were 168 new cases of COVID reported in Montana on Tuesday, and the death toll across the state since the pandemic began is 1,385, according to data compiled by MTN News.
The figures reported by MTN reflect the most recent data from the Montana COVID website, along with supplemental data received from county health departments.