Farrah Anderson
The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and local group Advocates for Aging Care have launched a survey to help identify the state of senior services…
As the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic begins, cases plunge after the deadliest month for Champaign County just this year. Nearly 62,000 cases.…
McKinley Health Center website
Because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only requires healthcare administrators to report severe infections of COVID-19 among the fully vaccinated, the true number and percentage of vaccine breakthrough cases infections in Champaign County and across the nation is significantly undercounted, public health experts say. Data from the University of Illinois shows that breakthrough cases — severe and mild — are much larger than than the state numbers. Since May, 75.9% of, or more than three out of four, positive tests belonged to fully vaccinated students or staff.
Darrell Hoemann
For one Champaign Unit 4 school parent, vaccinating his child is important. “How can you go against science?” Daniel Martinez said. “I lost my…
Illinois Department of Public Health
Influenza-like illness (ILI) activity has decreased compared to previous years in Illinois. The highest ILI rate was in mid-February of 2020 at 7.4%. That is a 93.2% decrease to 0.5% of ILI activity in February of 2021 compared to 2020.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s revised calculation of the campus positivity rate of COVID-19 has potentially lowered the rate substantially by reducing the number of reported positive tests. Epidemiologists say the more accurate way to calculate positivity would be to divide unique positive tests by unique total tests, but that information is not always available.
Previously confidential statewide data tracking coronavirus cases across Illinois shows that there have been at least 50 different outbreaks in Champaign County traced to restaurants, stores, churches, nursing homes, hospitals and in a county office. The internal database kept by the Illinois Department of Public Health has tracked case counts for nearly 2,600 separate outbreaks across Illinois. In Champaign County, the number of cases in individual outbreaks ranges from two at the Carle Clinic in Mahomet to 97 at Rantoul Foods in Rantoul, which CU-CitizenAccess has previously reported. The database also listed cases at Cunningham Children’s Home (8) , Plastipak (14) and the Champaign County Jail in Urbana (4). The data also includes the ‘unofficial prom party’ in Champaign County where there were 17 confirmed Covid-19 cases. That prom party has been reported as being in Mahomet.