As of Wednesday, February 3, 2021, Montana reports 94,810 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 437 new cases reported in the last day: 74 in Yellowstone County, 72 in Gallatin County, 41 in Flathead County, 38 in Lewis & Clark County, 31 in Cascade County, 27 in Missoula County, 21 in Silver Bow County, and more new cases in 31 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 3,421. Statewide, 4,307 people have been hospitalized. Currently, 121 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Yellowstone, Flathead, Cascade, and Gallatin Counties. 1,303 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Fifty-four more deaths have been reported since yesterday. Nationwide, more than 447,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 26,500,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

The Gallatin City-County Health Board will meet Thursday at 7 a.m. to consider the existing restrictions on businesses that aim to limit the spread of COVID-19. The restrictions, which expire Thursday, require most businesses to operate at 50% capacity, to cap tables at six individuals and to close from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. except for takeout and delivery services. The restrictions also limit many group gatherings to 25 people. The board will decide whether to extend the existing restrictions, eliminate them or change the business closing time to midnight. In January, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte rescinded similar statewide restrictions on business operations and group gatherings, which were enacted by former Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. Gianforte said local health boards could implement their own stricter rules. Following Gianforte’s action, some counties have loosened their local health rules while others, with more population and more community spread, kept local health rules in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The Republican-majority Montana legislature has passed a law to expand where people can carry a concealed weapon, including campuses, bars and casinos, courthouses, concerts and sporting events, and elsewhere, without training and without a permit. Two Republicans, Sens. John Esp of Big Timber, who had voted against the measure in the Senate Judiciary Committee that sent HB 102 to the full Senate, and Brian Hoven of Great Falls voted against the bill. All but one Democrat, Sen. Tom Jacobson, D-Great Falls, voted against it. Esp hoped to appeal to his colleagues’ respect for precedent and referred to proceedings from the first-ever state Legislature and that session’s House Bill 54, to preclude people from carrying guns in the territory’s cities and towns. Esp said, “This issue had its genesis long before there was a Montana territory. Those legislatures at that time, many of whom were vigilantes, knew full well the importance of the right to keep and bear arms, yet they knew the importance of a measured approach.” Legislatures that followed through the 1920s, ’40s and ’50’s, when generations of Esps held their own seats in the Capitol, still kept concealed carry limitations in place, Esp said. “I think they did that because they valued orderly commerce, they valued property rights of the individual businessmen and they valued public safety in places where large groups of people may gather,” Esp said. “And they valued that over their own assertions of their own individual rights.” The bill now goes to the governor’s desk.