University of Illinois
University of Illinois officials reported 1,754 new cases from Aug. 15 when students started coming back to campus, through Sept. 8, although a team of researchers working directly for the university administration had projected only 500 to 700 cases by Thanksgiving.
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The cities of Champaign and Urbana both issued emergency orders intended to prevent a possible surge in COVID-19 cases as students return to campus for the fall semester. Illinois researchers Eric Jakobsson and Santiago Nunez-Corrales created a computer model that estimated that students will bring back nine times the viral load – or rate of disease – than of community members. In a letter to both city councils, they recommended the cities, all bars and restaurants return to having only curbside pick-up, delivery or drive through. They said without those measures there could be an additional 800 cases, 80 more hospitalizations and four more deaths.
Pam Dempsey/CU-CitizenAccess
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign quietly announced on Tuesday an expansion of its Covid-19 testing by requiring students to be tested routinely even if they live in the community but do not plan to come to campus. The decision comes during a week when two university epidemiologists recommended in a letter to city officials in Champaign and Urbana that they go back from current Phase 4 of the Illinois reopening plan to Phase 3 to limit the spread of the virus during the surge of returning students.
Pam Dempsey/CU-CitizenAccess
Most of the international students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s 2019-2020 academic year are from countries with lower daily Covid-19 infection rates than the United States, according to a CU-CitizenAccess analysis. Last spring, 9,824 international students attended the University from more than 100 countries, according to university data.
Pam Dempsey/CU-CitizenAccess.org
Champaign County has had about 2 percent of those tested for the virus receive positive results, which means the person should self-quarantine for 14 days. But a comparison of state public health test data on August 3 and ZIP code data for students who attended the University in the last academic year shows that 20,000 out of 28,000 students from Illinois may arrive from ZIP codes with positive percentages above 5 percent, according to a review of the data by CU-CitizenAccess.org.
Pam Dempsey/CU-CitizenAccess.org
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began in January, Champaign County – home to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and about 50,000 faculty, students and staff – has experienced a low number of positive cases when compared to many other areas of the state and the U.S. A comparison of university data on where out-of-state students are from as of the last school year and data on the positivity rates in those states show as many as 5,000 students may be arriving from 32 states that have positivity rates higher than 5 percent, according to a review of the data by CU-CitizenAccess.org
Darrell Hoemann/C-U Citizen Access
In 2014, in the midst of a gubernatorial election, the construction of a $1.4 billion fertilizer plant in Tuscola was announced with much fanfare and the promise of state subsidies. Eight years later, no piece of dirt has been overturned since former Gov. Quinn poked a shovel into an open field in a symbolic groundbreaking. Now Tuscola officials say the outbreak of coronavirus will add to the long delays.
Darrell Hoemann/The News-Gazette
Black persons were booked at the Champaign County jail at least one and half times more than white persons over an eight-year period, according to a review of jail data by CU-CitizenAccess.org. The jail system has been criticized for shortcomings in health care and infrastructure over the past decade. The latest plan to consolidate the two facilities, estimated to cost between $42 and $52 million and is still being discussed by the county board. There were a total of 49,535 jail bookings from January 1, 2012 to March 11, 2020 – specific bookings, not individual persons booked.
Dylan Tiger
As Covid-19 surges again in the U.S., the high percentage of "recovered" cases might be cited as a sign that a vast majority of those infected quickly rid themselves of the virus. But the “recovered” statistics are incomplete, inconsistent and call into question the accuracy of any total number of recovered cases, according to a review of 50 state public health sites by CU-CitizenAccess.org.
By the end of June Champaign County had conducted more than 33,000 COVID-19 tests, according to data from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. A review of the data saw the number of daily tests increasing dramatically while showing that Champaign County has had a relatively low positive rate (2.5%) with 723 cases out of 29508 tests (May to June). It also showed a high “recovered” rate, but the term “recovered’ can be misleading. In Illinois, the definition of recovered means that an infected person has not died within 42 days of being diagnosed. The rate was 93 percent (May to June).
