Only one of the state’s 11 COVID-19 mitigation regions remains at the highest level of restricted activity Thursday, Jan. 21, as the statewide case positivity rate continues to decline.
The Illinois Department of Public Health announced Thursday that Region 7, which includes Will and Kankakee counties, was moved to Tier 1 mitigations, while Region 6 in east-central Illinois moved back to base Phase 4 guidelines.
That left only Region 4 in the Metro East region near the St. Louis, Missouri, border in the strictest Tier 3 mitigations.
“I am excited that 10 out of our 11 regions have moved out of Tier 3 mitigations,” IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in a news release. “However, this does not mean we can let our guard down. We must continue to practice actions to protect ourselves from the virus – wear our masks, avoid large gatherings, and get the vaccine when it is our turn. This is particularly critical as new variants circulate, which early studies show spread much more rapidly. We are headed in the right direction once again, so let’s stay the course.”
Regions can move downward if test positivity rates meet certain levels, hospitalizations for COVID-19 decrease for at least seven of 10 days and at least 20 percent of hospital and intensive care beds remain unoccupied.
To move to Phase 4, a positivity rate must remain below 6.5 percent for three straight days, while a rate between 6.5 percent and 8 percent allows movement to Tier 1 mitigations and a rate from 8-12 percent allows movement to Tier 2 mitigations from Tier 3.
Indoor dining is not allowed until a region moves into Tier 1, at which point it is permitted at 25 percent capacity. Drinks can be served in Tier 1 as long as food is served. Museums and casinos can reopen in Tier 2, as can indoor fitness classes, according to state guidance.
According to IDPH, if all trends continue in Region 4, it would move to Tier 2 beginning Friday.
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COVID-19 UPDATE: The state’s seven-day rolling average case positivity rate dropped to 5.4 percent on Thursday, Jan. 21, marking 13 days in a row it has decreased, hitting a low since Oct. 19.
Intensive care bed usage for the disease dropped by 8 percent from the day prior as of Wednesday night, with 662 beds in use by COVID-19 patients. There were 3,281 hospital beds in use by COVID-19 patients and 358 ventilators at the end of Wednesday, both decreases from the day prior.
The state also reported another 123 COVID-19-related deaths, which are considered a lagging indicator of disease spread. That brought the death toll to 18,520 since the pandemic first arrived in Illinois.
That’s out of more than 1 million confirmed or probable cases and 15 million test results reported.
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VACCINE UPDATE: The state has received more than 1.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Thursday, Jan. 21, with just over 900,000 delivered to providers and 524,050 allocated as part of the federal government’s pharmacy partnership program to vaccinate long-term care residents.
Of those, 572,389 doses have been administered, 90,752 of which were part of the long-term care effort. Administrators reported 34,649 vaccines administered on Wednesday alone.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s office also announced the locations for four state-supported vaccination sites in Cook County Tuesday, Jan. 19, which will begin vaccinating individuals immediately.
They are in the municipalities of North Riverside, Robbins, Cicero and Ford Heights and will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for health care workers who are part of Phase 1A before opening to those eligible for Phase 1B on January 25. More information is available at https://cookcountypublichealth.org/.
“Standing up these sites is a pivotal first step of a plan that coordinates our 97 local health departments statewide – who operate clinics already and will open up more as vaccine supply grows,” Pritzker said in a news release.
Phase 1B will begin statewide on Jan. 25 with sites giving vaccinations to those eligible by appointment only, according to the governor’s office. All residents over the age of 65 and frontline essential workers can receive the vaccine as part of Phase 1B.
IDPH will also partner with large pharmacies to launch new sites in communities across Illinois, according to the governors office. The sites announced Tuesday are being stood up through support from the Illinois National Guard.
Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday, Jan. 15, said starting the week of Jan. 18 “and increasing over the coming several weeks,” the state will “be bringing online hundreds of vaccination sites across the state.
Those include retail pharmacy chain locations; Illinois National Guard mobile teams; state-run mass vaccination locations in northern; central and southern Illinois, hospitals and urgent care locations; and, in time, doctor’s offices and large employers who can host their own workplace clinics.
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NEW COVID-19 VARIANT: A new COVID-19 variant first discovered in the U.K. has been identified in Chicago. Vaccines are expected to still be effective against the new variant.
“Clearly some progress has been made to combat this virus across our regions,” Gov. JB Pritzker said Friday, Jan. 15. “But I want to stress that it's incredibly important for Illinoisans to not let their guard down. We have now formally identified the first Illinois case of the more contagious British variant. And on top of that there are new variants from Japan, South Africa, Nigeria and Brazil, that we also know a little bit about.”
According to a news release, the new U.K. strain was first identified in the U.S. two weeks ago in Colorado and has since been identified in several other states.
“Evidence suggests that this variant can spread more easily than most currently-circulating strains of COVID-19, but there is no evidence that the new strain affects the sensitivity of diagnostic tests or that it causes more severe illness or increased risk of death,” according to the news release. “In addition, data suggest current vaccines will be effective and safe in providing protection against the variant.”
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ORGANIZED SPORTS: Gov. JB Pritzker’s office on Friday, Jan. 15, noted organized sports can resume in Tier 2 under the guidance initially offered by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
That means sports classified as “low risk,” such as baseball, track, cross country, gymnastics and swimming, will be allowed to participate in competitive intra-conference play in regions in Tier 2 or better.
Medium-risk sports including soccer and volleyball can participate in team scrimmages in those tiers, while high risk sports such as basketball, football, hockey and wrestling can participate in no-contact training.
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MARIJUANA REINVESTMENT GRANTS: The state announced Thursday that it has awarded $31.5 million in grants to 81 community organizations around Illinois to help fund legal services for low-income residents, youth development, violence prevention and economic development in areas hardest hit by the war on drugs.
The Restore, Reinvest and Renew, or “R3” grants are funded with a portion of the state’s revenue from sales of adult-use marijuana, and they were a key element of the 2019 bill that legalized recreational marijuana in Illinois.
The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. Under that law, the state levies an excise tax of 10 percent of the purchase price of marijuana with a THC content of 35 percent or less. Marijuana with THC levels higher than that is taxed at 25 percent of the purchase price while cannabis-infused products are taxed at 10 percent.
The law also provides that 25 percent of that revenue be used to fund grants in communities that have suffered from economic disinvestment, violence, and the severe and disproportionate damage caused by the war on drugs, which are largely low-income communities of color.
Officials said the grants announced Thursday, Jan. 21, were funded with revenues from the first month of legalized sales through the present. The deadline for submitting applications for the first round of grants was in July. Applications were submitted through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, which was also responsible for identifying communities that were eligible.
Prairie State Legal Services, which provides services in northern and parts of central Illinois, was awarded four grants totaling just over $1 million to provide civil legal aid, while Land of Lincoln Legal Services, which operates in central and southern Illinois, was awarded three grants totaling just over $230,000.
Several of the grants also went to agencies that provide re-entry services for state prison inmates being released back into the community. Among those was a $228,702 grant to Lutheran Social Services in Marion.
The largest single grant announced Thursday, $2.5 million, was awarded to the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative to provide a combination of youth development, economic development and violence prevention services on Chicago’s mid-south side.
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SOCIAL STUDIES OVERHAUL: Social studies classes in Illinois public schools are about to get a major overhaul, with more emphasis on Black history and the contributions of other underrepresented groups to American culture.
In addition, within the next few years, all school districts in the state will be required to offer computer science courses and more instruction in computer literacy.
Those are just two of the major provisions of a 218-page education equity bill, House Bill 2170, that passed during the recent lame duck session of the General Assembly with the backing of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus.
Jennifer Kirmes, executive director of teaching and learning at the Illinois State Board of Education, said in an interview that the agency has been working toward updating the state’s social studies standards for months.
Specifically, the bill calls on ISBE to adopt new standards by July 1 “that are inclusive and reflective of all individuals in this country.”
It also calls for establishing an “Inclusive American History Commission” to help the board develop the new standards. That 22-member commission will be charged with reviewing educational resources that teachers can use that “reflect the racial and ethnic diversity” of Illinois and the United States, providing guidance for educators on how to ensure that their class content is not biased in favor of certain cultures and providing guidance on how to identify resources for “non-dominant cultural narratives.”
The bill also calls on every elementary and high school to develop a curriculum that includes one unit of studying pre-enslavement Black history. That unit will cover the period from 3,000 BCE to 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. Black history units will also have to include the study of the reasons why Black people came to be enslaved and the study of the American civil rights movement.
Kirmes said ISBE expects to have a draft of the new standards available for public comment in March. The final standards will then be presented to the board for approval early in the summer.
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COMPUTER SCIENCE, HIGHER ED: Also in House Bill 2170, is language that tries to ensure greater access throughout the state to computer literacy programs and computer science education.
It calls on all districts to provide “developmentally appropriate opportunities” to gain computer literacy skills beginning in elementary school. Also, starting in the 2022-23 academic year, students entering ninth grade will be required to take at least one course that provides “intensive instruction” in computer literacy. That could be a course that also meets other graduation requirements such as math or social studies.
Beginning in the 2023-24 academic year, all districts that operate high schools will be required to offer at least one course in computer science, which is defined as “the study of computers and algorithms, including their principles, their hardware and software designs, their implementation, and their impact on society.” It does not include the study of everyday uses of computers and applications such as keyboarding or accessing the internet.
ISBE does not currently have educational standards for computer science, Kirmes said, so those will have to be developed from scratch.
Other provisions of the bill call for changing the state’s high school graduation requirements so they are more closely aligned with college admission requirements at the University of Illinois. Starting in the 2024-25 academic year, students entering ninth grade will have to complete two years of laboratory science. And beginning in the 2028-29 school year, they will be required to complete two years of a foreign language.
In the area of higher education, the bill changes the funding formula for the AIM HIGH student aid program. Instead of splitting the cost of those grants evenly between universities and the state, schools where 49 percent or more of their undergraduate student body are eligible for federal Pell grants will only have to match 20 percent of their state allocation while schools where fewer than 49 percent of students qualify for Pell grants will have to match 60 percent of the state allocation.
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STEANS RESIGNS: Sen. Heather Steans, a Chicago Democrat, plans to resign at the end of the month, after a 12-year tenure in the Illinois Senate.
“It’s been the privilege of a lifetime to represent the most diverse Senate district in the State of Illinois,” Steans said in a written statement issued Tuesday, Jan. 19. “I’ve benefited tremendously from the many perspectives of the people a I’ve represented. We’ve made great progress together, and now it’s time to pass the baton.”
Steans’ resignation follows two other high-profile resignations by Sens. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, and former Minority Leader Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, who both stepped down from their Senate seats in recent weeks.
Steans, as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was deeply involved in budget matters. She was a key player in crafting the cannabis legalization law, and had important roles in advancing legislation to protect abortion rights and to expand the Affordable Care Act in Illinois.
Steans, 57, has not revealed her next move, but her statement mentions she will continue to support the efforts of citizen-activists after leaving the Senate.
Her successor will be appointed to serve for the two years remaining in her term by a weighted vote of the Democratic committeemen and committeewomen from the Chicago wards that comprise the 7th Senate District, which Steans’ represents.
Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat whose House district is within Steans’ Senate district, confirmed to Capitol News Illinois that she intends to seek the appointment.
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PRETRIAL INTEREST ON DAMAGES: The Illinois General Assembly last week pushed through legislation to allow victims in all personal injury and wrongful death cases to collect interest on money they were awarded by a court starting from the moment the alleged injury or death took place.
House Bill 3360 is meant to deter companies or individuals who are sued from intentionally stalling or delaying cases that would be successful at trial, according to the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association — a major lobbying force behind the bill.
The bill sets prejudgment interest at 9 percent, the same rate used in Illinois for post judgment interest, which is collected in cases after the court issues a judgment award. The only prejudgment interest, under current Illinois law, is a 5 percent interest that applies to damages in specific cases that do not include personal injury or wrongful death cases.
Under HB 3360, prejudgment interest would not apply to municipalities facing personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits. The interest would begin to accrue once the company or individual being sued “has notice of the injury from the time of the incident itself or a written notice,” the bill states.
This means that the interest in these cases could begin to accrue before the injured party files a lawsuit in court.
Opponents — including members of the Illinois Defense Counsel — argued the measure unfairly targets defendants, or those being sued, and criticized how the bill was passed quickly by both chambers with limited time for meaningful debate.
It passed with only Democratic support in each chamber. It needs only a signature from Gov. JB Pritzker to become law.
IDC, an organization serving the interests of defense lawyers, also lambasted the bill for allowing prejudgment interest to apply to noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, and future damages, such as future lost wages or medical expenses.
A group of IDC members wrote a letter to Pritzker last week, encouraging him to veto the bill.
Trial Lawyers Association President Larry Rogers Jr., an attorney who represents injured plaintiffs at Chicago-based Power Rogers LLP, said the bill intends to discourage litigation and encourage resolution.
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DECOUPLING BILL FAILS: House Democrats fell 10 votes short of passing a bill, endorsed by Gov. JB Pritzker, that would have eliminated certain tax deductions for Illinois business owners that were created under the federal CARES Act. Pritzker has argued this change by the legislature is needed to prevent revenues from shrinking by more than $500 million during the current fiscal year, thus enlarging the state’s $3.9 billion budget deficit.
Specifically, the bill would end the CARES Act amendments that expanded income deductions business owners can claim as net operating losses, carryback losses or excess business losses.
In a Jan. 8 news release, Pritzker encouraged the General Assembly to “decouple” Illinois’ tax law from the federal tax amendments under the CARES Act, an action that would have kept the state tax code consistent with previous years.
Pritzker claimed those changes would have preserved $500 million in state tax revenue from noncorporate taxpayers and owners of pass-through entities, such as limited liability companies and partnerships.
During House floor debate in the early hours of Jan. 13, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle described the bill as preserving up to $1 billion in state revenue.
Democratic Rep. Michael Zalewski, the bill’s sponsor, said the proposed changes would impact about 440,000 taxpayers statewide.
Ten House Democrats voted present while another eight did not vote on the bill, including former House Speaker Michael Madigan, of Chicago, and the newly elected Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, of Hillside.
At least a dozen Republicans condemned the proposal as a last minute “tax hike” on small business owners already crushed by the pandemic.
Zalewski characterized the proposal as an effort to prevent loss of revenue, rather than an effort to raise new revenue.
House Republicans were also critical that the Pritzker administration and the Illinois Department of Revenue did not notify taxpayers or the legislature sooner of the state’s plans to decouple from the federal changes that were made in March.
During a news conference on Friday, Pritzker said he expects the legislature will bring the proposal back in the 102nd General Assembly.
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REMOTE VOTING FAILS: A bill which would have permitted the House and Senate to convene remotely and cast votes during a public health emergency did not pass both houses in the lame duck session.
It would have required both chambers to create rules for remote participation in session and committees, and it would have applied to the boards of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability and Legislative Audit Commission.
The Senate changed its rules during the brief May session to allow for remote hearings but the House failed to pass similar changes. Two lawmakers voted remotely in the lame duck session.
Both chambers released tentative calendars last week showing they are scheduled to meet in-person several days each month through May.
Since the pandemic hit Illinois in March of 2020, members of the House met briefly the following May and earlier this month at the Bank of Springfield Center, while the Senate continued at the Capitol for those brief sessions.
Multiple people that attended last week’s lame duck session – including the chief of staff to the House speaker’s office – have tested positive for COVID-19. The governor said last week he would not prioritize lawmakers in the next phase of vaccination.
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OTHER BILLS FAIL: A vote-by-mail bill, which passed the Senate by a vote of 40-18 but did not receive a vote in the House, would have made permanent some changes that were implemented in response to the pandemic for the 2020 general election. This would have included the use of drop-box sites to collect ballots without postage and curbside voting during early voting or on Election Day.
It also would have required the State Board of Elections to provide guidance, rather than rules, for securing collection sites.
Meanwhile, House Bill 122, which would have added another round of 75 marijuana dispensary licenses among other actions, passed the Senate but did not receive a vote in the House as well.
Senate Bill 558, which was a wide-ranging bill consisting of several health care reforms backed by the Black Caucus, passed the House but did not receive a vote in the Senate.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
