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DuPage County gets coronavirus ‘warning’ as Illinois logs 2,145 new cases: ‘We need everyone to take this seriously’
A broad swath of Chicago’s western suburbs hit a COVID-19 warning level Friday as public health officials announced 2,145 more people have tested positive for the deadly virus statewide.
The latest daily caseload was slightly above Illinois’ two-week average of about 2,022 new cases per day, and they were confirmed among 56,661 tests to raise the state’s rolling testing positivity rate to 3.9%.
The Illinois Department of Public Health also announced the virus killed 32 more people, the most in a single day since the beginning of the month. The state has averaged about 20 COVID-19 deaths per day over the last two weeks.
It was an increase in COVID-19 deaths that helped land DuPage County on the state’s updated list of counties considered to be at a viral “warning level.” Six deaths were reported in the west suburban county last week, up from four the previous week.
Read the full story from Mitchell Armentrout here.
News
7:44 a.m. CPS students log on at much higher rates than the spring, but attendance down from previous years
About four of every five Chicago Public Schools students logged on for the first week of school, a markedly higher rate than in the spring despite first-day attendance still dipping from previous years in a sign of the continued challenges of remote learning, figures released Friday by the district show.
The early engagement levels are a promising start for a school system in which barely half of students attended online classes three or more days per week after the coronavirus pandemic forced buildings to close in the spring.
Yet the first week was a mixed bag, with dozens of schools drawing better attendance than previous years’ district-wide average, while a handful of schools still had less than half their students log on.
The results reflect a varying degree of success in bridging a stubborn technology gap and creating an online learning plan that is achievable for working-families who are juggling students’ classes with parents’ jobs.
Read the full story from Nader Issa here.
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Analysis & Commentary
7:47 a.m. No Big Ten? That’s just one of the big 10 storylines as college football gets cooking
Big Ten football is dead.
For a little while longer, anyway.
Someday, we’ll look back and laugh at the self-righteous fuss that was made — from Lincoln, Nebraska, to the Deep South; from Columbus, Ohio, to the White House — over the Big Ten’s “break” from college football during a pandemic. Or we’ll look back and cry. Either way, the SEC, ACC and Big 12 won’t have waited for the Big Ten and Pac-12 to arrive at the table before digging into the 2020 season.
Indeed, the fractured state of college football is storyline No. 1 this season.
Meanwhile, first-year commissioner Kevin Warren is under heavy fire as presidents and chancellors around the Big Ten prepare to vote on a new proposed plan for when games could start. Ohio State coach Ryan Day complained that communication from the league has been “disappointing and often unclear.” Penn State coach James Franklin publicly questioned Warren’s leadership.
So much — for now — for the league’s preseason rankings in the AP Top 25: Ohio State 2, Penn State 7, Wisconsin 12, Michigan 16, Minnesota 19 and Iowa 24.
But the show goes on without the Big Ten. And as national storylines go, here’s the rest of the big 10 (where 10 actually means 10):
Read Steve Greenberg’s top 10 college football storylines here.
