As of Monday, October 18, 2021, Montana reports 165,941 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 1,272 new cases of coronavirus infection reported since yesterday: 234 new cases in Yellowstone County, 148 new cases in Lewis & Clark County, 123 new cases in Missoula County, 116 new cases in Flathead County, and more new cases in 42 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 11,109. All but one of Montana’s 56 counties reports active cases. Currently, 449 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. 2,183 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Fifty-five more people have died of COVID-19 in Montana since Friday. Nationwide, more than 724,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 44,900,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

Colin Powell, a US military leader and the first Black US secretary of state, has died of Covid-19. He was 84. Colin Powell’s leadership in several Republican administrations helped shape American foreign policy in the last years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st.

As the rest of the U.S. begins to refer to the second “summer surge” of the coronavirus pandemic in the past tense, Montana has for weeks stood out as one of the nation’s hotspots, with no sign of a slowdown as statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations set a new record last week.