Daywatch: Chicago’s population grows but suburbs stall, city’s speed camera rules result in $11 million in fines and a Hollywood ending in Field of Dreams game

Good morning, Chicago.

Yesterday the city addressed the aftermath of Lollapalooza, and reported that roughly 200 cases of COVID-19 so far from the festival. Chicago’s top doctor said that there’s currently no evidence the controversial event was a “superspreader.”

Meanwhile, with case numbers on the rise and the delta variant spreading, it’s once again a confusing time for dining out in the city. My colleague Nick Kindelsperger put together a quick guide about what you should expect.

And, yesterday the Supreme Court weighed in on a vaccine mandate for the first time. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett refused to block Indiana University’s shot requirement. Here are the details.

— Nicole Stock, audience editor

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Chicago’s population grows slightly, but suburbs stall to slowest rate in decades, according to 2020 census

Chicago rebounded from a hefty population loss in the first decade of the 2000s to add about 50,000 residents over the last 10 years, but once-robust growth in the surrounding suburbs has slowed to a crawl, according to new 2020 census data released Thursday.

Reflecting a national trend of a more diverse and urban population, the number and percentage of white and Black residents in the Chicago region continued to fall in many areas while the number of Latinos increased.

Chicago speed cameras now ticket drivers going 6 mph over. The new rules resulted in about 300,000 citations and $11 million in fines in the first 2 months.

Until last March, more than 100 cameras around the city could ticket drivers for going at least 10 mph over the limit. But after Mayor Lori Lightfoot dropped the threshold to 6 mph over in March, the speed monitors got mighty busy issuing the $35 tickets.

In all, cameras across Chicago issued 322,447 of the $35 tickets during the first two months, which will bring in $11.3 million to city coffers if violators pay all the fines. That’s a nearly 17-fold increase over those same months in 2019.

Suburban private school that lost state recognition over its response to Pritzker’s mask mandate says it never planned to defy the law

A suburban Chicago private school that lost its state recognition this week over its response to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s school mask mandate said Thursday officials never planned to defy the public health order.

The Illinois State Board of Education said in a Wednesday letter to Timothy Christian Schools in Elmhurst that the school’s status as a recognized nonpublic school was being immediately revoked because Superintendent Matt Davidson “declined to affirm” the school would comply with the state’s universal masking requirement.

Northwestern and Amita hospitals have yet to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for workers. Here’s why.

A growing number of Illinois hospitals have announced COVID-19 vaccine mandates for their workers in recent weeks, but some of the Chicago area’s highest-profile health systems remain missing from that list.

The prestigious Northwestern Medicine system and Amita Health, one of the largest systems in the state with 14 acute care hospitals, have yet to require vaccines for their workers. It’s something that’s starting to worry some patients.

• Illinois nursing homes back vaccine mandate for workers as COVID cases rise. In some homes, employee inoculation rate in single digits.

A Hollywood ending in the Field of Dreams game: Tim Anderson’s walk-off home run gives the White Sox a thrilling 9-8 win

Standing in the dugout along the third-base line wearing a vintage Sox uniform that was inspired by what the team wore in the early 20th century, White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito took in all the festivities associated with playing a game in a cornfield.

“It blew me away,” Giolito said of his reaction to seeing the temporary 8,000-seat ballpark on the Dyersville, Iowa, farm where the Academy Award-nominated 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed.

It was a Hollywood ending for the Sox: Tim Anderson hit a two-run, walk-off homer to right in the ninth, giving the Sox a thrilling 9-8 victory.