As of Monday, July 26 2021, Montana reports 115,406 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 148 new cases reported since Friday: 28 new cases in Flathead County, 25 new cases in Missoula County, 14 new cases in Yellowstone County, 12 new cases in Cascade County, 10 new cases in Lake County, and more new cases in 20 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 820. (That’s up almost a hundred from Friday.) Currently, 90 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Flathead, Cascade, Yellowstone, and Missoula Counties. 1,695 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nationwide, more than 610,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 34,400,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

Health officials and doctors say people who’ve previously had COVID-19 should still get vaccinated. Late-stage clinical trial data /finds the vaccines are safe/ and help protect people with past COVID-19 infections from reinfection, regardless of whether they had mild or severe COVID-19 infections.

New projections from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub at the CDC show the current COVID-19 surge in the U.S. — fueled by the highly contagious delta variant — will steadily accelerate through the summer and fall, peaking in mid-October, with daily deaths more than triple what they are now. It’s a deflating prospect for parents looking ahead to the coming school year, employers planning to get people back to the workplace and everyone hoping that the days of big national surges of disease and death were over.

A 10-year-old child in Colorado died of the plague, and state health officials are investigating the bacterial infection in animals and fleas. Plague is a bacterial disease that can be transmitted to humans through the bites of infected rodent fleas or handling infected animals.