As of Tuesday, September 15, 2020, Montana reports 9,244 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 139 new cases reported in the last day: 30 in Missoula County, 27 cases in Rosebud County, 19 in Yellowstone County, 17 in Cascade County, 9 in Big Horn County, 7 in Gallatin County, 5 in Flathead County, 4 in McCone County, 2 in each of eight more Montana counties: Carbon, Custer, Glacier, Hill, Lake, Lewis & Clark, Lincoln, and Roosevelt County, and 1 in each of five more Montana counties: Beaverhead, Jefferson, Musselshell, Ravalli, and Sheridan County. Statewide, 539 people have been hospitalized, and 109 people currently are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. Yellowstone County has had 2,536 cases so far. Gallatin County has had 1,160. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 1,954. The most active cases are in Yellowstone County, with 671 active cases. Gallatin County has 36. 140 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nationwide, more than 195,000 Americans have died. There have been 6,600,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

Even as cases rise, Europe is learning to live with the coronavirus. Protections like wearing masks, which have proved divisive in the U.S., are now widespread on the European continent, helping people get on with their lives with calculated risk in the hope of avoiding more crippling lockdowns. As the health minister of Italy put it: “We are in a living-with-the-virus phase.” Britain, meanwhile, is facing an overwhelming surge in demand for virus tests. The reopening of schools has generated a backlog of 185,000 samples, just as the pace of infections threatens to explode.

Anti-maskers are sanctioned by digging graves for COVID-19 victims in Indonesia. Local authorities in Indonesia ordered eight people who broke the country’s face mask laws to dig graves for COVID-19 victims. The province of East Java punished the mask violators with the manual labor at a local cemetery in hopes of deterring others from disregarding the nationwide face-covering mandate, the Jakarta Post reported. None of the rulebreakers handled the corpses. Only local health officials wearing full-body protective equipment are allowed to do so to limit the risk of exposure.

In Pennsylvania, a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s orders restricting mass gatherings and shutting down business amid the Covid-19 pandemic as unconstitutional Monday, as lockdown restrictions and business closures continue to be a major source of contention as the pandemic stretches on. Pennsylvania’s current state guidelines had already reopened most businesses with social distancing requirements and capacity restrictions, and limited mass gatherings to 25 people indoors or 250 people outdoors, but officials noted that reopenings could be rolled back if the public health situation were to worsen. Wisconsin’s stay at home order was also overturned in May by the state’s Supreme Court. Most courts have upheld stay at home orders, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld California’s restrictions on religious gatherings; Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the restrictions “appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.”