As of Wednesday, February 17, 2021, Montana reports 97,900 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 243 new cases reported in the last day: 41 in Gallatin County, 34 in Flathead County, 30 in Yellowstone County, 24 in Missoula County, 23 in Silver Bow County, and more new cases in 29 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 2,532. Statewide, 4,477 people have been hospitalized. Currently, 91 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Yellowstone, Flathead, Gallatin and Lewis & Clark Counties. 1,334 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nationwide, more than 490,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 27,900,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

A storm system that is bringing snow and freezing rain to parts of the country dealing with power and water outages is also threatening to soak already saturated parts of the Southeast. More than 100 million people are under winter weather alerts extending from Texas to New England. Snow and freezing rain are expected to bring perilous travel conditions from the south-central US into the central East Coast. Flood and flash flood watches cover around 16 million residents in the Southeast, including Atlanta and Raleigh. The watches extend from Georgia into the Carolinas into Friday morning. This storm aside, brutally cold weather continues across the Central and Southern US, straining utilities and leaving more than 3.1 million homes and businesses without electricity — about 2.6 million of which were in Texas. Millions in Texas were struggling to stay warm Wednesday, many going for days without power, By Thursday, more than 3 million people did not have electricity, as winter weather advisories, warnings or watches stretched from Texas to Virginia.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said the words many people have been waiting to hear when he called the COVID-19 vaccine the “light at the end of the tunnel” during the University of Montana’s annual Mansfield Lecture on Wednesday. But the pace at which the nation approaches the end of the pandemic depends on how many people get vaccinated, Fauci said. Dr. Fauci, the nation’s top adviser on the COVID-19 pandemic response and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he thinks the United States will approach “a degree of normality” by mid-fall or sooner “if we could get past this issue of vaccine hesitancy where a significant number of people may not want to get vaccinated.” Fauci said that 70 to 85% of the nation’s population will need to be vaccinated before things can return to “normal,” which will include activities like going to the movies, in-person classes and dining at restaurants — even if face masks and social distancing are still required at times.