Early in the pandemic, some mountain towns and counties shut out visitors. These days, they’re welcoming tourists with open arms — and, in some cases, a shot in the arm.

Federal data shows that, as of Jan. 21, dozens of long-term care facilities in Colorado were enrolled to receive vaccines from Walgreens or CVS but still did not have any vaccination dates scheduled. Some have started to look for another way.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, nurses can make more than $6,200 a week. A recent posting for a job in Fargo, North Dakota, offered more than $8,000 a week. Some can get as much as $10,000.

Colorado’s health department is issuing thousands of COVID codes a day to people who test positive. But no one knows how many are actually notifying others.

Originally published on March 31, 2020 12:28 pm “The snow’s going sideways, it’s swirling,” said Billy Barr, from the abandoned silver mine he lives in almost 10,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains. We’re all social distancing these days, and it’s unclear when exactly that will end.

Originally published on March 27, 2020 9:30 am Sometime around Valentine’s Day, a box arrived at a lab on the western edge of Fort Collins, Colorado. It contained vials full of coronavirus and it was just what Lindsay Hartson and her colleagues had been waiting for.

Originally published on March 27, 2020 9:27 am As the graph below shows, the number of COVID-19 cases reported by public health agencies in the Mountain West is climbing. But what do those numbers actually say?  The short answer is, not too much.

Originally published on March 13, 2020 4:58 pm Support for our series Private Prisons: Locking Down The Facts came from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-profit news organization that partners with journalists and newsrooms to support in-depth reporting and education around the globe.

Originally published on March 11, 2020 5:08 pm Support for our series Private Prisons: Locking Down The Facts came from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-profit news organization that partners with journalists and newsrooms to support in-depth reporting and education around the globe.

Originally published on March 13, 2020 2:15 pm Teams around the world — including at least two labs in the Mountain West — are racing to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus.  A group at Colorado State University is working on ways to inactivate the virus, which is one option for developing a vaccine. 

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Originally published on February 11, 2020 4:47 pm At a public hearing last year in Boise, Idaho, recent transplant Alicia Peterson urged lawmakers not to tighten vaccine requirements.  “I, this last year, ripped my whole family from the only home I’ve ever known, which was California, for these very reasons,” Peterson said.

Originally published on February 3, 2020 6:02 pm Updated at 6:00 p.m. A bipartisan group of legislators say they plan to introduce a bill aimed at increasing childhood vaccination rates in the state.  They say the bill would require parents seeking a vaccine exemption for non-medical reasons to use a specific form.

Originally published on December 27, 2019 9:19 am Feral pigs cause an estimated $1.5 billion in damage each year, especially to crops. Now concern is mounting they could be at the doorstep in parts of the Mountain West.

Originally published on December 20, 2019 3:51 pm A group of chemicals called PFAS are common in firefighting foams, as well as household products like rain jackets, pizza boxes and non-stick pots and pans.

Originally published on January 3, 2020 3:30 pm Back in mid-December, three children were hospitalized with measles after passing through the Denver airport and the emergency department of Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Originally published on December 19, 2019 3:21 pm Colorado’s poised to put the question of wolf reintroduction on the November ballot. One unanswered question is how the predators might affect the spread of chronic wasting disease, if at all. CWD is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that currently infects deer, elk, moose and reindeer.