Gov. JB Pritzker receives his first COVID-19 vaccine in March 2021.   

It started on January 24, 2020: An Illinois woman returned from Wuhan, China with the second confirmed U.S. case of COVID-19. Two months later, Illinois and the country were locked down in hopes of slowing the spread of the then-largely unknown virus as quickly as possible.   

Over three years later, following 4.1 million confirmed cases and over 36,000 deaths in Illinois, the state’s COVID-19 disaster declaration ends Thursday.   

“It’s a significant indicator of the progress that’s been made of getting past the worst parts of the COVID pandemic and the fact that Illinois is one of the most vaccinated sates in the Midwest and that we’re in decent shape moving forward to keep people safe from this deadly disease,” Gov. JB Pritzker told The Daily Line.