As of Friday, December 18, 2020, Montana reports 75,992 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 522 new cases reported in the last day: 83 in Yellowstone County, 77 in Gallatin County, 53 in Cascade County, 49 in Flathead County, 37 in Silver Bow County, 33 in Missoula County, 31 in Lewis & Clark County, and more new cases in 32 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 9,265. Statewide, 3,226 people have been hospitalized, and 275 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Yellowstone and Cascade Counties and in Flathead Counties. 854 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Eighteen more deaths have been reported in the last two days. Nationwide, more than 313,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 17,400,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

The University of Montana will be a COVID-19 Vaccine Provider and Distributor. UM qualified as an approved vaccine holding and distribution center this week. UM has not yet received the vaccine, and the timeline for distribution and delivery still is being worked out with state and federal health authorities.

California has activated a ‘mass fatality’ program as COVID cases and deaths climb in that state. Gov. Gavin Newsom said , “This is a deadly disease, a deadly pandemic and we’re in the middle of it right now.” California’s mass fatality program includes the state purchasing thousands of extra body bags and 60 refrigerated units that “are currently standing by in counties and at hospitals,” Newsom said. He said that although vaccines are beginning to arrive, the coronavirus crisis is far from over. About 32,300 new cases of the virus are reported in California each day, a number Newsom said was historic. The positivity rate in California climbed from 6.9 percent at the beginning of December to more than 10 percent as of Monday.

Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has run out of ICU beds. The facility is “opening additional treatment spaces for patients with Covid-19 as well as rescheduling some elective surgical procedures and redeploying staff.”

The Washington Monument has been forced to close because a number of staffers are now in quarantine after a recent visit by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who tested positive this week for Covid-19.

A third health care worker in Alaska has experienced an allergic reaction after receiving Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. According to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, a female employee’s tongue started to swell about 10 minutes after her shot and she developed shortness of breath. She went to the hospital’s emergency department, where she received two doses of emergency epinephrine, which is usually used to treat a life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Six hours later, the woman was well enough to be discharged, Two other allergic reactions linked to the Pfizer vaccine were reported this week, also in Alaska. One worker’s reaction was so severe that she needed to be hospitalized; the other worker’s reaction was milder.