As of Monday, September 21, 2020, Montana reports 10,429 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 130 new cases reported in the last day: 22 in Yellowstone County, 18 in Cascade County, 17 in Roosevelt County, 16 in Glacier County, 10 in Missoula County, 8 in Rosebud County, 6 in Silver Bow County, 4 in each of Carbon and Gallatin Counties, 3 in each of Dawson, Hill, Lake, Lewis & Clark, and Sheridan Counties, 2 in each of Flathead and Musselshell Counties, and 1 in each of six more Montana counties: Beaverhead, Custer, Daniels, Fergus, Richland, and Toole Counties. Statewide, 576 people have been hospitalized, and 108 people are currently being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. Yellowstone County has had 2,863 cases so far. Gallatin County has had 1,207. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 2,393. The most active cases are in Yellowstone County, with 784 active cases. Gallatin County has 43. 160 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nationwide, more than 199,000 Americans have died. There have been 6,830,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting. The U.S. accounts for more than a fifth of the nearly 1 million deaths reported worldwide and more than a fifth of the 31 million-plus confirmed cases.

As the US is poised to surpass 200,000 deaths due to coronavirus, experts are warning of a ‘twindemic’ as COVID cases rise and flu seasons looms. Coronavirus and the flu virus are less likely to infect people if everyone wears a face mask and keeps their distance from one another. Face masks are required to be worn in public in Montana in counties with four or more active COVID-19 cases. The way face masks and social distancing and limiting gatherings of people is this: you don’t give the virus to anyone, and you don’t get it from anyone.

A Kentucky doctor who urged mask-wearing early in the coronavirus pandemic has died of COVID-19. Dr. Rebecca Shadowen was an infectious disease specialist who was hospitalized for four months before dying September 11. Even as she fought COVID-19, “She’d say, ‘Look folks, this isn’t politics. This is science.'” In the early weeks of the pandemic, before coronavirus cases crushed hospitals in New York and spiked in other states, Dr. Rebecca Shadowen asked her friends a question on Facebook. “If you could save the life of another person without harming your own, would you?”

From the start, Dr. Shadowen advocated for social distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing, and she hoped her community of Bowling Green could become a model for the rest of her state, where residents sparred over stay-at-home orders and challenged Kentucky’s mask mandate in the courts. In May, while offering her expertise as a member of Kentucky’s Bowling Green-Warren County Coronavirus Workgroup, Shadowen fell ill. She toggled between local hospitals for the next four months, at times being placed on a ventilator and in the intensive care unit. “There were multiple times she thought she was turning the corner and was on the road to recovery,” her husband, David Shadowen said, who is also a doctor. But after dealing with complications from the virus, including abdominal bleeding and weakened lungs, Shadowen died on Sept. 11. She was 62.

Dr. Adeline Fagan, 28 years old, was in her second year of residency as an OB/GYN physician. She went in to a Houston, Texas hospital in July to work her twelve-hour shift and deliver babies, but instead was asked to attend to COVID patients in the emergency room. That morning she went into work feeling well and excited to see patients, but by the evening she began to feel sick. What started as intense flu-like symptoms escalated within the week to a hospital stay. Adeline spent the next few weeks battling COVID and was treated with several different respiratory therapies and put on dozens of drugs. When there was no positive response to these methods of treatment Adeline decided to begin an experimental drug trial. But before seeing if the new drug was effective, her lungs could no longer support her and she was placed on a ventilator and on ECMO, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, so Adeline’s lungs had only the task of healing themselves. Not long after, Adeline suffered a massive brain bleed. She died September 19, 28 years old, one of the many health care professionals who have lost their lives in the coronavirus pandemic.