Hospitals reaching capacity in three Montana centres as dire COVID situation continues
By Medicine Hat News on November 2, 2020.
Health officials in Montana are warning that hospitals are nearing capacity in Billings, Great Falls and Helena after steep increases in new coronavirus cases in late October. On Friday, 1,063 new cases along with 27 deaths were added to statewide figures that now show 10,450 active cases and 364 mortalities. About 360 people are hospitalized statewide. Inpatient bed capacity is between 80 and 100 per cent full in 10 counties, including Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark and Cascade counties, near or including the major urban centres. They also sit above four-fifths full in Gallatin and Park counties, near Bozeman. New cases in Hill County, Mont., which lay south of Cypress County Alberta, numbered 34 on Friday. There are now 392 active cases in the area that has a population of about 16,000. Twenty people there have died. In Nearby Harlem, junior and senior high schools were closed on Friday as cases rose. 7-6
