Reporter Roundtable on COVID-19
Fair Havens Senior Living, in Decatur, has had dozens of cases of COVID-19 among its residents, and multiple deaths. Reginald Hardwick/Illinois Newsroom
Over the weekend, authorities announced the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Illinois now exceeds 30,000, and the disease is known to be in 93 of the state’s 102 counties.
Officials also said 1,290 people here have died from the coronavirus disease. But those numbers could have been much higher, and they say they’re not only because of business closures and the stay-at-home order.
Given that, just before the weekend, Gov. J.B. Pritzker made it clear Illinois will not be getting anywhere near a pre-COVID normal anytime soon.
“Folks, I’ve said time and time again my decisions are hard ones, but they will follow the science, and the science says our students can’t go back to their normal routine,” Pritzker said Friday. “Therefore I am suspending in-person learning in schools for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year.”
Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Public Health on Saturday for the first time released numbers of all the known positive tests and deaths linked to long-term care facilities. An analysis by the Chicago Tribune suggests nearly one in four Illinois deaths from COVID-19 are linked to nursing homes. But as with so much on the coronavirus, the statistics are likely too low to capture what’s really happening out there.
Joining us to talk about these issues are Jim Meadows, a reporter for Illinois Newsroom, and Nader Issa, education reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.