The latest
Illinois sees 1,624 new COVID-19 infections, biggest daily caseload since Memorial Day
Illinois’ gradual rise in coronavirus cases took another step up Thursday as health officials announced another 1,624 people have tested positive, the state’s highest daily caseload in two months.
The new cases were confirmed among the latest batch of 39,706 test results reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health, raising the statewide testing positivity rate over the last week to 3.4% — nearly a full percentage point higher than it was two weeks ago.
The latest tally — the biggest number of new cases Illinois has seen in a single day since May 25 — was announced a day after Gov. J.B. Pritzker sounded the alarm on the state’s steady increase in coronavirus cases over the last few weeks.
In June, Illinois’ daily caseloads measured in four digits only twice, but it’s already happened 10 times with over a week left in July. The state is averaging about 1,032 new cases daily so far this month.
Read the full story by Mitchell Armentrout here.
News
11 a.m. Theater audience must be masked for duration of show at reopening playhouse
With Phase Four of Illinois’ coronavirus recovery plan allowing for indoor gatherings of 50 or less, Lincoln Park’s Greenhouse Theater Center will re-open its doors Friday with a live, two-woman musical.
For audiences, attending the show works like this: All tickets much be purchased in advance and all attendees must wear masks the entire time they’re in the theater (including during the show). There will be no ticket or concession sales inside the theater. There will be no programs or ushers. Ticket holders will give their name to the sole box office attendant (shielded by plexiglass) on arrival, and will then be escorted by the house manager directly to their seats. The box office will open 45 minutes before showtime.
Every other row in the theater will be left empty, and each ticket holder will be at least six feet away from other audience members and at least 15 feet away from the actors singing on stage, according to Greenhouse Theater Center owners William and Wendy Spatz. The 25-foot-wide stage will allow the actors to remain at least 15 feet away from each other while singing.
The box office rep is responsible for cleaning and disinfecting the theater and the lobby before every performance, William Spatz said. A separate cleaning crew will clean the dressing rooms.
The house manager is responsible for enforcing mask and social distancing compliance before, during and after the show, Spatz said. If audience members fail to comply, “there’s a simple solution. We call the police,” he said. “Or, if someone in the audience takes off their mask off during the show and the house manager sees it? We’ll stop the show.”
Read the full story from Catey Sullivan here.
10:23 a.m. How does contact tracing work?
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been promising since April that he would step up efforts to track people potentially exposed to coronavirus patients. The practice, which involves tracking down people who were in contact with those who test positive, is regarded by health officials as key to limiting the virus’ spread and instrumental in saving lives.
“Contact tracing allows us to break the chain of transmission to prevent large outbreaks and, ultimately save lives,” Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in a statement.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, contact tracing typically involves:
- Interviewing people with COVID-19 to identify everyone they had close contact with during the time they may have been infectious
- Notifying contacts of their potential exposure
- Referring contacts for testing
- Monitoring contacts for signs and symptoms of COVID-19
- Connecting contacts with services they might need during the self-quarantine period
Pritzker is pledging more than $150 million to public health departments outside Cook County to help them bolster their contact tracing efforts. Another $60 million will be given to nine community organizations, also outside Cook, that will coordinate regional tracking efforts, state public health spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said.
The community organizations will contract with local groups to help reach “hard to reach” populations, including various ethnic groups, the homeless, migrant workers and others “leery of talking” with the government, Arnold said.
Read more about state funding for contact tracing here.
8:41 a.m. US signs contract with Pfizer for COVID-19 vaccine doses
The Trump administration will pay Pfizer nearly $2 billion for a December delivery of 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine the pharmaceutical company is developing, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced Wednesday.
The U.S. could buy another 500 million doses under the agreement, Azar said.
“Now those would, of course, have to be safe and effective” and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Azar said during an appearance on Fox News.
Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE announced separately that the agreement is with HHS and the Defense Department for a vaccine candidate the companies are developing jointly. It is the latest in a series of similar agreements with other vaccine companies.
The agreement is part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, under which multiple COVID-19 vaccines are being developed simultaneously. The program aims to deliver 300 million doses of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021.
New cases
Analysis & Commentary
8:14 a.m. Challenging times require all hands on deck
I had just started on my bucket list (having taken a long-awaited trip to Cuba) when the coronavirus pandemic shut down my dreams of exotic travel.
Stuck at home, my plans to take up line dancing and to play with clay in a pottery class also got put on hold.
But as the Good Book teaches, there is a season for everything:
“…A time to break down. And a time to build up;
A time to keep silence and a time to speak,” the book of Ecclesiastes points out.
Think about it.
We are confronted with a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 144,000 people in this country, most of them Black and Brown — highlighting long-standing racial inequities in our health care system.
At the same time, we are witnessing the resurgence in blatant “Jim Crow” racism — to the point that a white police officer could calmly and publicly snuff out the life of George Floyd in Minneapolis during an arrest — igniting days of violent protests nationwide.
Now is not the time to be silenced.
