As of Friday, October 22, 2021, Montana reports 170,567 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 1,088 new cases of coronavirus infection reported since yesterday: 231 new cases in Cascade County, 187 new cases in Yellowstone County, 104 new cases in Missoula County, 102 new cases in Flathead County, and more new cases in 39 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 10,919. Every one of Montana’s 56 counties reports active cases. Currently, 429 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. 2,247 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Eight more people have died of COVID-19 in Montana Thursday to Friday. Nationwide, more than 733,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 45,300,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

Montana Democratic Legislators have asked Republican Montana Senate President Mark Blasdel and Montana Speaker of the House Wylie Galt to assign the Legislature’s special counsel to investigate Attorney General Austin Knudsen over reports that Knudsen and other officials at the Montana Department of Justice misused the resources of their office, including law enforcement, to harass and intimidate physicians and staff at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena.

A Montana State University researcher known for her work to improve health in Native and rural communities was elected yesterday to the National Academy of Medicine, considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Dr. Alexandra Adams, director of MSU’s Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity, or CAIRHE, was named one of 100 new members in conjunction with the academy’s annual meeting.

A logging project called the Sourdough Fuels Reduction project is a 300-acre timber project south of Bozeman on a 380-acre chunk of city land about a mile up Sourdough Canyon. The logging project will reduce fuels around Bozeman Creek. On the city’s 380-acre property, crews will thin large-diameter trees on about 100 acres. Then hand crews will remove some small-diameter trees on another 200 acres. The Forest Service is carrying out another, larger project on nearby federal land. That project — the Bozeman Municipal Watershed project — calls for logging, forest thinning and prescribed burning on about 4,700 acres between Bozeman and Hyalite creeks.