Bonanza Valley Voice -

All good things must come to an end, and in Brooten, a good thing lasting over two months has ended.

After going an incredible six weeks in the heart of summer with no new COVID-19 cases, the zip code areas of Belgrade, Brooten and Elrosa saw the streak come to an end. It ended in an underwhelming way, although in this case "underwhelming" is exactly what one wants. The August 5 zip code report released by the Minnesota Department of Health showed one new COVID-19 case among the approximately 4,300 men, women and children living in the zip codes of Belgrade 56312, Brooten 56316 and Elrosa 56325. The lone new COVID-19 case was reported in the Brooten zip code, which has approximately 1,500 people living here.

Just how long has it been in the Brooten zip code since a COVID-19 case was reported? That figure is two-and-a-half months! That's correct. The last COVID-19 case reported in rural Brooten or the city of Brooten was back on May 20. Since that time, as the community has been 100 percent wide open, no COVID-19 cases have been reported until this week. The community hosted a rip roaring, off-the-hook Bonanza Valley Days almost a month ago, and all we could say at the time was, "What pandemic?"

Back to present-day: the MDH does not include information on whether or not this new COVID-19 case was symptomatic, asymptomatic, vaccinated or unvaccinated. Now the waiting game begins for another week to see what the August 12 number will be for the B-B-E zip code areas.

Included in the August 5 MDH report was a COVID-19 related death in Stearns County for an individual who was between 85 and 89 years old. In Stearns County, COVID-19 increase figures have skyrocketed over the latter half of July and now early August. That has yet to affect the B-B-E zip code areas. However, in western Stearns County, the case increases remain very low on a per-capita basis. This suggests the large increases is taking place in the eastern half of the county.

Other good news: the zip code area of Glenwood (56334) had just three new cases in the past week.

On first glance through the area zip codes, larger increases on a per-capita bases included the Pennock and Sunburg zip codes. The Sunburg zip code, which has approximately 707 people living in it, had three new cases reported in the August 5 report. The Alexandria zip code, which has almost 24,000 people living in it and currently has thousands more visiting it each week in resort and tourism-related endeavors, had 15 new cases in the past week.

Other area zip code increases over the past week will be added here.

Area zip code COVID-19 case increases from July 29 to August 4:

Willmar 56201 - 27 new cases

Benson 56215 - NO new cases

Kandiyohi 56251 - 1 new case

Kerkhoven 56252 - NO new cases

Murdock 56271 - NO new cases

New London 56273 - 7 new cases

Pennock 56279 - 3 new cases

Starbuck 56281 - NO new cases

Spicer 56288 - 6 new cases

Sunburg 56289 - 3 new cases

Alexandria 56308 - 15 new cases

Glenwood 56334 - 3 new cases

Sauk Centre 56378 - 4 new cases

Melrose 56352 - 1 new case

Paynesville 56362 - 4 new cases

Villard 56385 - 2 new cases.

That's all for now, as it is 1 p.m. on Thursday. It's time to get to the Pope County Fair in Glenwood!