As of Thursday, August 26, 2021, Montana reports 124,910 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 629 new cases reported in the last day: 119 new cases in Yellowstone County, 100 new cases in Flathead County, 71 new cases in Missoula County, 47 new cases in Gallatin County, and more new cases in 42 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 4,239. All of Montana’s 56 counties report active coronavirus cases, and all new reported cases are the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Currently, 210 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. 1,781 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nationwide, more than 633,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 38,400,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

In COVID ICUs at hospitals across the nation, doctors report a surge in critically ill pregnant women. Doctors estimate a tripling — or even quadrupling — of pregnant patients hospitalized with COVID, and report that pregnant women hospitalized with COVID deteriorate faster than other patients.

A Connecticut woman will serve a week in jail and pay $2,400 in fines after being prosecuted for walking across a thermal area in Yellowstone National Park. Madeline Casey, 26, of New Hartford, Connecticut, was charged with walking off the boardwalk in the Norris Geyser Basin to get closer to a thermal pool and geyser, venturing off the boardwalk despite the fact that many signs are posted along the route warning visitors.

At the highest point on the Greenland ice sheet last week, it rained instead of snowed last Saturday at Summit Station, a research facility that sits atop the Greenland ice sheet at 10,551 feet. It was the first rainfall event in recorded history at the normally frigid summit, and it marks only the third time in less than a decade that above-freezing temperatures were recorded at the Arctic research station.