The Chicago City Council will meet for the first time in nearly two months on Wednesday, but the Council Chambers will be empty. 

Instead, aldermen will meet virtually via videoconference to adopt new rules to permit the City Council to meet with no aldermen present. The City Council had been scheuled to meet March 18, before Gov. JB Pritzker ordered that gatherings of more than 10 people be banned. 

A second person being held at Cook County Jail has died from the coronavirus, as the family of the first detainee who succumbed to the illness filed a lawsuit targeting the jail’s policy of shackling sick detainees.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered a citywide moratorium on demolition permits while the Chicago Department of Buildings conducts a “top-to-bottom city review” of how its permitting policy may have led to a coal plant demolition that blanketed the Little Village neighborhood in a cloud of dust on Saturday.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to accelerate testing, improve cleaning and implement better social distancing measures to slow the rapid spread of coronavirus inside Cook County Jail.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office began operating Thursday morning out of a 66,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse designed to handle the growing number of those who die from the coronavirus, officials announced.

Chicago officials are counting on at least $1.6 billion in federal aid to reach the city, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Chicago Public Schools in the coming weeks to fight the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Thursday.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered all liquor stores to close at 9 p.m. starting Thursday, cracking down on booze sales to stop large gatherings outside the stores that she said could spread the coronavirus.

Cook County will roll out a zero-interest loan program targeted at suburban small businesses and gig workers to supplement a similar fund already operating in the city, county leaders announced on Tuesday.

Approximately 83,000 Chicagoans who lost their jobs or found their paychecks scaled back because of the coronavirus pandemic applied for $1,000 grants to help them pay their rent or mortgages.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed an executive order on Tuesday designed to reassure undocumented immigrants living in Chicago that they will not be left behind as the city works to ease the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

As the number of deaths from coronavirus in Illinois surpassed 300 on Monday — including the first reported death of a person held at Cook County Jail — those calling for the release of incarcerated people are growing impatient with the speed at which prisoners, detainees and incarcerated youth are being evaluated for release.

Voters cast their ballots at the Loop Super Site, 191 N. Clark St. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]

Almost 30 percent fewer Chicagoans showed up to the polls last month than they did during the 2016 primary, but the coronavirus pandemic did not stop voters from breaking records last month.

"We see a tiny pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday.  [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Sounding a “public health red alarm,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot Monday vowed to put the full force of the city government behind efforts to reduce the “devastating” toll of the coronavirus on Black Chicagoans.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi. [A.D. Quig/The Daily Line]

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi is restarting the clock on this year’s round of property valuations.

Kaegi will send new assessment notices to property owners in the nine townships that already got mailers from his office this year, he told The Daily Line on Friday. The revised assessments will take into effect the toll that the coronavirus pandemic has already taken on the region’s real estate market.