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In 2014, the Illinois legislature followed the lead of other states and passed a law created a program where — in an economic downturn — companies could avoid mass layoffs by reducing workers’ hours and allowing them to receive partial unemployment benefits.
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After granting the troubled nursing home industry legal immunity through an executive order last month, Gov. JB Pritzker backtracked slightly and ordered that the industry can only be protected from civil liability lawsuits involving Covid-19.
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Leaders of Illinois’ various horse racing associations are worried the extended shutdown of the state’s harness and thoroughbred racing seasons due to the coronavirus will decimate an already-fragile industry — even if horses can start racing without spectators at the end of May.
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In less than two days since it was available online, about 68,000 non-salaried workers in Illinois signed up to access benefits under a special assistance program operated the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES).
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Blacks represent a third of total deaths in Illinois from the coronavirus, despite representing just 14 percent of the state’s total population. The findings, released Tuesday, suggest legacy disparities related to health and employment are contributing factors to the crisis.
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The Illinois Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s direct appeal of a downstate judge’s decision to let State Rep Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) out of Gov. JB Pritzker’s stay-at-home order to combat the spread of the coronavirus in Illinois.
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Illinois' child welfare system has struggled for years from understaffing and budget cuts. Now the state and its private allies face a new challenge: The coronavirus pandemic.
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Chicago-based marijuana dispensary Sunnyside Lakeview may become the first dispensary in Illinois to unionize. Last week, workers received ballots for their union election, which was made more urgent by the coronavirus pandemic, they said.
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Influential labor unions are asking a federal judge to allow for an extended deadline to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would prevent right to work laws from taking hold in Illinois.
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On a day Illinois reported 138 new deaths from the coronavirus — totaling 3,111 since Illinois’ first death in mid-March — Gov. JB Pritzker said it’s possible Illinois’ Covid-19 trajectory has plateaued, with metrics like hospital resource usage and number of new cases essentially flat.
[Hannah Meisel/The Daily Line]
“I certainly am concerned that we're going to be on a plateau for a long period of time,” Pritzker said during his daily Covid-19 press briefing Thursday.
Early models for Covid-19 in Illinois predicted a tidy bell curve with a “peak” in mid-April. Pritzker said he still hoped for such a trajectory, but no one would know whether the state was on the downward side of the virus’ growth “until you see it in the rearview mirror,” warning that a plateau might end in a surge in cases and hospitalizations.
But even a plateau is better than exceeding Illinois’ healthcare system capacity, the governor said.
“If you can maintain a plateau, for a period of time, and there is still hospital bed availability that’s good enough,” Pritzker said, defending using certain metrics in his plan to reopen Illinois’ economy in phases and by region.
While each of the state’s four regions identified in Pritzker’s “Restore Illinois” plan are currently in the second phase, moving into later phases of the reopening plan is partially dependent on the mass expansion of testing in Illinois.
In mid-April, Covid-19 testing became available to anyone experiencing symptoms indicative of the virus, but when testing finally passed 10,000 specimens collected per day two weeks ago, the rate of positive tests began to drop. Statewide, the positive test rate reached a recent new low of 14.85 percent, though the northeast region of Illinois has a higher positive test rate hovering around 20 percent.
[Hannah Meisel/The Daily Line]
Illinois remains far behind in testing, according to testing metrics suggested by a new study from Harvard University that says the state should be performing 64,000 tests daily by May 15 — a number that far exceeds the 17,783 test results reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health between Wednesday and Thursday, which itself was a near-record for testing in Illinois.
Pritzker touted the state as second among the 10 most populous states in the U.S. for testing metrics. He suggested that a worldwide supply shortage and lax coordination with the Trump administration have been challenges.
“I don't think 64,000 is adequate for the state of Illinois,“ he said. “We're going to need many more tests than that.”
[Hannah Meisel/The Daily Line]
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