Coronavirus in Illinois updates: Here’s what’s happening Monday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area

The final region to avoid the more restrictive measures in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s reopening plan during a resurgence of coronavirus cases will be under stricter rules starting Wednesday, officials announced Sunday.

The region, stretching from Kendall and McLean counties to the Iowa border, hit a rolling seven-day positivity rate of 8.5% last week. The region has had an average rate of 8% or above for three consecutive days, triggering the additional measures. As of Sunday, the region’s positivity rate was 9.3%, officials said.

Illinois public health officials meanwhile reported 6,980 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 Sunday, a day after the state reported a record 7,899 cases. There were also 35 additional deaths reported.

The statewide positivity rate for cases as a percent of total test for the past 7 days jumped to 8%, from 7.5%. There were 78,458 tests reported in the prior 24 hours. The state has now reported 417,280 cases since the pandemic began, and 9,792 fatalities.

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Here’s what’s happening Monday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area and Illinois:

7:01 a.m.: COVID-19 restrictions take effect in east-central Illinois

Coronavirus restrictions were to take effect Monday in Region 6 in the state’s COVID-19 reopening plan, including Champaign-Urbana and Decatur.

The 21-county area, which includes a long stretch of the state along the Indiana border, saw its seven-day rolling positivity rate for coronavirus tests hit 8.6% on Tuesday, exceeding the state-established threshold of 8% for the third straight day and triggering the reopening rollback. The restrictions, which go into effect Monday, include including a ban on indoor dining and bar service and a 25-person cap on gatherings, down from 50.

The state announced Sunday that Region 11 in north-central Illinois, including Kendall County, the last in the state not under the new coronavirus restrictions, had passed the 8 percent positivity rate that trigger the restrictions. Restrictions will go into effect there on Wednesday. — Chicago Tribune staff

6:50 a.m.: Chicago health officials urge people to get flu shots

City health officials are urging Chicago residents to get flu shots this season to protect against the influenza virus and help keep beds open in hospitals for coronavirus patients.

The city Health Department is holding 12 flu clinics in the next two weeks. Chicago residents can get flu shots at the clinics “for no out-of-pocket cost, regardless of their immigration status and ability to pay,” according to a release from the mayor’s office.

Clinics will be held at locations including city colleges, and people are encouraged to make an appointment, although walk-ins are welcome.

For more information and to see list of flu clinics, check chicago.gov/flu. The city also has restarted its Chicago Flu Vaccine Finder page to help people find places to get a flu shot; residents can also call 311 to find a city flu clinic. — Chicago Tribune staff

6 a.m.: Illinois is nearing its contact tracing hiring goal. Is it too late?

As Illinois finally nears its goal of employing 3,800 people to track down and warn the contacts of people infected with COVID-19, experts say that number may no longer be sufficient to help control the virus.

That’s because contact tracing — which aims to reduce disease spread by identifying and isolating people who could be infectious — works best when infection rates are relatively low. The state is seeing record numbers of daily confirmed cases.

“Contact tracing is not a silver bullet, and it can be overwhelmed very quickly with an expanding epidemic, because cases will appear and transmission will occur much more quickly than a health department can hire contact tracers,” said Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "So, there is kind of a threshold at which contact tracing becomes much less effective.

“And so, what we need to do in those cases is use other interventions like enforcing mask use and physical distancing and shutting down indoor areas.”

Watson is part of a team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and National Public Radio that has tracked the status of contact tracing in the United States. They concluded in a recent report that once a state is logging more than 10 new COVID-19 cases daily for every 100,000 residents, contact tracers become overwhelmed.

Illinois is far above that level, logging a seven-day rolling average of more than 40 newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 each day for every 100,000 people. In response, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has shut down indoor dining and drinking and limited gathering capacities to try to quell the surge that is taking dozens of lives every day.

Those moves have fueled questions about how contact-tracing information plays into the state’s decisions about tightening restrictions. The state has said it will soon post data collected by local health departments related to outbreaks and exposures.

Five months since Pritzker said vigorous contact tracing was key to keeping the pandemic in check and safely reopening society, public officials still view it as key, despite the challenges.

Read more here. — Hal Dardick

6 a.m.: As the pandemic wears on, more working moms are forced to quit their jobs, and the impact of the ‘shecession’ could be long-lasting

Millions of working mothers have seen their financial security and career prospects upended by the coronavirus, and experts say it could take years for women to recover. In September alone, 865,000 women left the workforce or were laid off nationwide, compared with 216,000 men, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Called the “shecession” by some economists, the coronavirus pandemic is unlike other modern recessions in that job losses are greatest among women, who dominate jobs that cannot be done remotely, like food service, retail and hospitality.

At the same time, they’re being required to do more at home. As schools and day care centers close, parents — mostly mothers — are forced to take on more responsibility, an escalation in child care needs that hasn’t happened in past recessions.

Some women in two-parent households are being forced to drop out of the workforce altogether, at least temporarily.

“The pandemic has forced millions of families to decide who scales down or drops out of the workforce for the next few months, and it’s going to be mostly women,” said Titan Alon, an economics professor at the University of California at San Diego who has researched the impact of the coronavirus on gender equality.

Read more here. — Katie Surma

In case you missed it

Here are five stories from the past week related to COVID-19.

In the fight over reopening schools amid the pandemic, race and class divisions are stark.

Some suburban restaurants are defying the state’s indoor shutdown order, while others watch and await legal challenges.

Tents and domes are the new must-have for restaurants during pandemic, but will outdoor dining work when it’s 20 degrees out?

Coin circulation is improving, but Chicago stores reeling from a summer of few coins are still asking customers for spare change.

Ice Castles in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, will open this season with coronavirus safety precautions.

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