COVID-19 in Illinois updates: Here’s what’s happening Wednesday - Chicago Tribune

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Tuesday clashed over his order for tighter restrictions that would prohibit indoor dining and bar service in Chicago, with the governor saying they’re needed to help stop the coronavirus spread and the mayor indicating she’ll try to change his mind.

Hours after Pritzker announced the rollback in Chicago starting Friday, citing increases in the city’s positivity rate and in hospital admissions for people with COVID-19 symptoms, Lightfoot in a televised interview said she’s trying to convince him not to go through with his order, citing concerns about the economy.

Meanwhile, Chicago added Florida to its travel ban and warned that Michigan could be added next week, public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Tuesday. That makes 31 states, as well as Puerto Rico, on the city’s list of places residents can’t travel to without quarantining.

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

11:50 a.m.: Pritzker defends tighter restrictions in Chicago in face of pushback from Lightfoot, adds Lake and McHenry counties to list of regions where indoor bar and dining banned

A day after Mayor Lori Lightfoot indicated she would try to change Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s mind about shutting down indoor dining and bar service in Chicago later this week, the governor reiterated that the restrictions will take effect in the city Friday, as planned.

“We have now a COVID storm that’s hit the entire country, frankly, I think there’s nobody that could turn on a television set, watch news, without seeing that it’s happening everywhere, and it’s happening across the state of Illinois. Chicago hasn’t been immune from that,” Pritzker said Wednesday at an unrelated news conference in Chicago.

“So as I announced yesterday, the same mitigations that went in place for other areas of the state that have tripped those metrics, where we’ve got people getting sick and going into the hospital … we’ve imposed the same sets of mitigations and we’ll be doing that for the city of Chicago,” he said.

Also Tuesday, the state said Lake and McHenry counties will become the 8th of 11 regions in Pritzker’s reopening plan where coronavirus metrics have exceeded state thresholds, leading to tighter restrictions. Indoor bar and dining service will be banned in those counties beginning Saturday after the average positivity rate exceeded 8% for three consecutive days, the governor’s office said.

Pritzker’s administration has reimposed tougher restrictions in regions from suburban Cook County to southern Illinois when they’ve reached state-set thresholds indicating a resurgence of the coronavirus.

In the face of growing criticism, he defended those measures on Wednesday as being “effective,” citing two regions where the state tightened rules and the COVID-19 test positivity rate then dropped to a level where indoor dining and bar service could resume.

10:50 a.m.: COVID-19 outbreak on Wisconsin — 12 people, including 6 players and head coach Paul Chryst — forces cancellation of Saturday’s Big Ten game vs. Nebraska

Wisconsin has become the first Big Ten football team to have its just-started season impacted by COVID-19.

Because of a team outbreak — including a positive test for coach Paul Chryst — the Badgers' game Saturday against Nebraska will be canceled.

The team will suspend all activities for seven days, the university announced Wednesday. The Big Ten’s schedule does not allow room for makeup games, meaning Saturday’s game will not be rescheduled.

As of Wednesday morning, 12 people within the football program had tested positive for COVID-19 in the previous five days, according to a news release. Six players and six staff members tested positive with additional results pending.

9:45 a.m.: Dr. Ngozi Ezike’s emotional moment shows health care workers feel COVID-19 fatigue too

At an Oct. 23 news conference, Illinois Department of Public Health Director Ngozi Ezike became emotional while talking about the nearly 10,000 lives lost in Illinois — “People who started with us in 2020 and who won’t be with us at the Thanksgiving table.”

Ezike paused and turned away from the camera as she wiped her tears and took some time to compose herself. She said she understands the emotional toll and knows how hard it is for everyone.

“I don’t get to live in some COVID-free bubble, exempt from all the pain and tragedy of this pandemic,” she said. “If you’re talking about COVID fatigue from having to keep wearing a mask, think about the COVID fatigue for health care workers, respiratory therapists, who are going to have to go through this whole episode again of trying to fight for people’s lives,” she added.

This has been an extreme year for health care workers. They are not removed, Ezike said, from stressors others face in a challenging moment where “you can’t actually see the end.”

Along with the stressors of parenting children who are remote learning and the near absence of friends and family, the past seven months have been a cycle of hypervigilance and fear for health care workers.

Data released Monday from the American College of Emergency Physicians revealed that many are feeling stress and burnout. Among the 862 emergency room physicians surveyed, 87% were more stressed now than since the start of the pandemic. Burnout causes included concerns about family, friends and personal health.

7:56 a.m.: Boeing will cut 11,000 more jobs as aircraft business slows

Boeing will cut more jobs as it continues to bleed money and lose revenue during a pandemic that has smothered demand for new airline planes.

The Chicago-based company said Wednesday that it expects to cut its workforce to about 130,000 employees by the end of next year, down 30,000 from the start of this year. That is far deeper than the 19,000 reduction that the company announced three months ago.

Boeing Co. updated its jobs plan on the same day it reported a $449 million loss for the third quarter, a swing from the $1.17 billion it earned in the same period last year. The loss was narrower than analysts expected, however.

Revenue tumbled 29% to $14.14 billion.

7:55 a.m.: 4 inmates have died from COVID-19 at East Moline Correctional Center, out of 29 in state prisons

Four inmates at the East Moline Correctional Center have died from COVID-19, all of them in October, according to authorities.The fourth death, a man in his 50s, was Monday, according to Lindsey Hess, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Corrections.

As of Tuesday, 343 inmates and 33 staff have tested positive for coronavirus at the minimum-security prison, 100 Hillcrest Road, East Moline. Deaths are not being reported on the websites for the facility or IDOC.

Hess said no EMCC staff members had died.

There have been 29 inmate deaths from COVID-19 at Illinois prisons, according to Hess. Stateville Correctional Center, near Chicago, has had 13 inmates die; a man in his 50s was the first death on March 29. The next highest number of COVID-19 deaths has been at Robinson Correctional Center, where three of the five deaths were men in their 70s.

At the beginning of last week, only one of the 11 regions in the state’s reopening plan was subject to those rules.

It is the first region to surpass the state-set thresholds for those two metrics at the same time. The other region have triggered tougher rules by reaching an 8% positivity rate threshold for three consecutive days. As of Saturday, the rolling seven-day positivity rate for the Cook County suburbs was 8%.

6 a.m.: For special education families, an agonizing choice on returning to school: Risk COVID-19 exposure or accept ‘heartbreaking’ limits of remote learning

When Katherine Buitron’s son froze mid-sentence and collapsed on his Chromebook during a virtual class, some of his classmates were scared. Others seemed to think he just fell asleep, she said.

She moved her son and closed the Chromebook.

After the seizure, he had bad headaches and double vision. Subsequent doctor’s appointments took even more time away from classes. In addition to epilepsy, the fifth grader has autism and dyslexia, and is immunocompromised, Buitron said. His two siblings also are in special education programs, but none is in the first groups of students tapped by Chicago Public Schools to return to in-person learning.

The family has already decided they’d continue remote learning anyway, because of health concerns, but would have a hard time making an informed decision based on the sparse plans the district has presented.

“They expect parents to make choices without the full information,” Buitron said.

Even with the limited details, Deidra Kenar, another CPS parent whose children have individualized education programs, would love for them to return to school.

“We feel like the longer and longer they are away,” she said, “the more and more challenges that are coming up for them.”

Although their families don’t yet have the option to send their children back to school before the end of the calendar year, for thousands of other CPS families with special education students, decision day is Wednesday.

Along with prekindergartners, about 5,000 students in moderate and intensive cluster programs have been identified as the first who could resume in-person learning. That includes those who attend specialty schools where most or all students are what CPS classifies as diverse learners.

Based on families' responses to opt-in forms due Wednesday, district officials will decide whether they can support in-person learning five days a week or use a hybrid model for specialty schools, CPS spokesman James Gherardi said.

6 a.m.: After their mom died from COVID-19, her kids give a final toast with a beloved, hard-to-find token of her youth: Tab diet pop

Kathleen Berger died in May from coronavirus-related causes, leaving behind eight kids and a legacy encapsulated by a bright pink soda pop can.

Berger, who was 73, was a voracious consumer of Tab, the saccharin-infused cola known for its distinctive packaging, vaguely metallic taste and aerobic studio vibe. Introduced in 1963 by the Coca-Cola Co., it was once the nation’s dominant diet soda, producing a legion of fans so hard-core they called themselves Tabaholics.

But Tab lost its mojo over the decades, surpassed by Diet Coke and other carbonated descendants, and Coke finally dispatched the brand earlier this month with a eulogy of buzzwords (“We’re prioritizing bets that have scale potential across beverage categories, consumer need states and drinking occasions”).

The retirement led to hoarding that soon made Tab, which was already hard to find, as rare as a white truffle. As of Tuesday, the asking price on eBay for a single can went as high as $25.

Berger, whose Tabaholism was second to none, would have recoiled at such a markup. That left her children, who are spread from Seattle to Elmhurst to suburban Boston, with a challenge: locate enough Tab in the wild so they could give a final, video chat-enabled salute to their mother.

“We were all like, ‘All right, let’s go out and try to find some, and then we’ll do this toast to Mom,’” said her son, Matt Berger. “And then none of us could find it anywhere.”

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