As of Saturday, February 6, 2021, Montana reports 95,717 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 261 new cases reported in the last day: 46 in Flathead County, 46 in Gallatin County, 27 in Lewis & Clark County, 24 in Yellowstone County, 18 in Missoula County, and more new cases in 28 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 3,345. Statewide, 4,350 people have been hospitalized. Currently, 107 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Yellowstone, Flathead, Cascade, and Gallatin Counties. 1,312 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Five more deaths have been reported since yesterday. Nationwide, more than 459,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 26,900,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

On this SuperBowl weekend, news broke that the NFL is offering President Joe Biden all 30 football stadiums as mass COVID vaccination sites. Currently, seven NFL teams are hosting vaccinations for COVID-19 at or near their stadiums. NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, wrote in a letter to Biden, “The NFL and our 32 member clubs are committed to doing our part to ensure that vaccines are as widely available in our communities as possible. We can expand our efforts to stadiums more effectively because many of our clubs have offered their facilities previously as COVID testing centers as well as election sites over the past several months,” Goodell wrote. His letter said that each NFL team would coordinate with local, state and federal health officials on the vaccination efforts at the stadiums, two of which are shared by a pair of teams.

That was already happening in San Francisco, where the 49ers team and Santa Clara County announced Friday that Levi’s Stadium would next week begin being used as a vaccination site for local residents. The team said that the stadium will be California’s largest vaccination site, with an initial capacity of 5,000 people receiving shots per day, and plans to increase that to 15,000 people each day as vaccine supplies rise. Goodell noted that the NFL will have 7,500 vaccinated health-care workers from across the country as guests at this Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Senate Taxation Committee on party lines Friday killed a bill aimed at helping workers chip away at student loan debt through a proposal billed as a recruitment tool for employers. Senate Bill 124, from Missoula Democratic Sen. Shane Morigeau, would have provided that student loan payments paid by an employer as a benefit to workers aren’t counted as taxable income. There were no opponents to the bill when it was heard in the committee, and it saw support from students, recent graduates and the Montana Chamber of Commerce. At the hearing, Senate Taxation Committee Chairman Brian Hoven, R-Great Falls, said some students choose lower wages — and more debt. He pointed to a worker who didn’t want to suffer working for him in a hot grain bin for $12 an hour and opted instead to work at a pool for $8 an hour. “The vast majority of these people are able bodied, and they took on the debt voluntarily,” said Hoven. “No one put a gun to their head to take on this debt.” As for the growing costs of a college education, Sen. JP Pomnichowski said society encourages young people to get a degree, and society as a whole then benefits. “I don’t think it’s a choice to incur debt,” said Pomnichowski, a Helena Democrat. “That is the cost of the higher education that employers benefit from when that person then graduates … and can enter one of our good paying jobs.”