Coronavirus: Essential News
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The Biden administration is providing funding to produce another round of free at-home tests via the COVIDtests.gov program.
Doses of the vaccine are expected to be widely available within five to 12 days at clinics and pharmacies throughout Chicago.
Chicago public health officials have said the CDC approval was all they needed to “begin the rollout” of the vaccine, which will be free for all city residents. “We already have the vaccine in Chicago,” Dr. Geraldine Luna, medical director for the Chicago Department of Public Health, said Monday.
The Lucira COVID-19 and Flu Home Test is a single-use test, which can be purchased without a prescription.
The site offers snapshots of COVID-19 transmission in communities around 75 wastewater treatment facilities in Illinois.
The mayor, who said she was asymptomatic, also came down with the virus in January.
After a three-month hiatus, the administration is making four rapid virus tests available via website starting Thursday.
“The bottom line is we have protection available. It’s just upon all of us now to make sure people use those tools,” the surgeon general said.
Hospital admissions for COVID-19 have jumped more than 26% in the last week alone, putting them on pace to hit numbers not seen since mid-February.
If you haven’t had your COVID-19 fall 2022 booster, now is the time, Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said.
“We are not where we need to be as a city, in people getting that fall 2022 booster,” a costumed Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said.
The Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs said 23 staff and 42 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 at the Illinois Veterans’ Home at LaSalle. No one has required hospitalization.
Illinois has reported an average of 2,482 new cases per day over the past week, a 32% decline compared to a month ago.
After lifting the statewide school mask mandate at the end of February and lifting vaccination requirements on college campuses earlier this summer, the Democratic governor called it the latest part of his plan “to carefully unwind the state’s COVID-19 executive orders.”
The FDA today authorized the new booster, which could arrive as early as next week in Chicago, where nearly 2 million residents are expected to be eligible.
With transmission considered medium or high in 94 Illinois counties, residents are being urged to mask up when gathering indoors in 92% of the state.
Hospital admissions have more than doubled since mid-April, following a steady increase in cases since the early spring — a trend playing out in most other parts of the country, too.
“I know everyone wants COVID to be over,” said Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady. “Unfortunately, we continue to see the COVID virus itself mutate quickly, with new, more contagious subvariants emerging every few weeks.”
From how to prepare your kids to where to get vaccinated, the Sun-Times answers parents’ questions.
But hospitalizations are still about as high as they’ve been since February, with more than 1,200 beds occupied as of Thursday night.
The Alpha and Delta variant waves left 342 Chicagoans dead in less vaccinated parts of the city. That toll could have been 75% lower if more people had been inoculated, University of Chicago Medicine researchers found.
Cases have been on the rise statewide since mid-March, or a few weeks after Gov. J.B. Pritzker lifted his indoor mask mandate.
Masks would be urged for all residents in indoor public spaces in counties that rise to the high risk level. One of Cook County’s top doctors says she doesn’t expect the county to hit that level anytime soon. But Chicago’s Dr. Allison Arwady has said it “could happen potentially even in the next few weeks.”
With cases on the rise statewide, only about 41% of eligible Chicagoans have gotten their recommended COVID-19 booster shot. And almost a quarter of Illinois counties are now at the CDC risk level in which older people and the immunocompromised are urged to mask up indoors.
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