As of Sunday, January 3, 2021, Montana reports 82,381 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 346 new cases reported in the last day: 76 in Flathead County, 65 in Yellowstone County, 36 in Missoula County, 28 in Lewis & Clark County, 22 in Lincoln County, 20 in Gallatin County, 17 in Cascade County, and more new cases in 17 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 4,908. Statewide, 3,631 people have been hospitalized, and 192 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Yellowstone, Cascade, and Lewis & Clark County. 972 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Eleven more deaths have been reported in the last two days. Nationwide, more than 351,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 20,600,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

Israel is bidding to be the first nation to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic by vaccinating the majority of its population in an attempt to return to normal. The country is currently leading the worldwide inoculation charge: It has administered a vaccination dose to more than 10 percent of its 9 million citizensin two weeks. That represents a significantly higher proportion than any other nation. Israel vaccinated more than 150,000 people on three consecutive days last week, and on Friday, the millionth person was injected with a Pfizer-BioNTech dose. The country has now vaccinated over half of the 2 million at-risk people it considers a high protection priority.

Desperate to control a new variant of the coronavirus, Britain quietly changed vaccination procedures to allow for a mix-and-match regimen. If a second dose of the vaccine a patient originally received isn’t available, or if the manufacturer of the first shot isn’t known, British health officials have authorized another coronavirus vaccine to be substituted. The new guidance contradicts guidelines in the U.S., where regulators noted that the authorized coronavirus vaccines “are not interchangeable.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. is falling behind in its vaccination campaign because federal officials left much of the planning to overstretched local health officials and hospitals, like the one in Puerto Rico, above. “We’ve taken the people with the least amount of resources and capacity,” one expert said, “and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination.”

December was the deadliest, most infectious month since the start of the pandemic. More than 77,000 people lost their lives in December to Covid-19, while 6.4 million contracted the virus. The U.S. surpassed 20 million cases in December amid the emergence of a new virus variant and a slower than expected vaccine rollout. The second-deadliest month was April 2020, with more than 58,000 coronavirus deaths.

Republican Virginia state Sen. Ben Chafin Jr. has died after contracting COVID-19. Chafin, a cattle farmer and attorney, was 60 years old.