Coronavirus live blog, Dec. 16, 2020: Less than 40% of CPS students plan to return for in-person learning

A day after the first coronavirus vaccine doses went into Illinois health care workers’ arms, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday announced the state’s next vaccine shipments from the federal government will be cut roughly in half.

Here’s what else happened in coronavirus-related news.

News

8:55 p.m. 77K kids — 37% of eligible students — plan to return for in-person learning, CPS says

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

About 77,000 Chicago Public Schools students plan to return to classrooms once schools reopen in the new year, accounting for 37% of K-8, preschool and special education cluster program students who will initially be eligible for in-person learning, district CEO Janice Jackson announced Wednesday.

In a presentation at the monthly Board of Education meeting, district officials revealed that a disproportionate number of families sending their children back to schools are white, while Black families were more likely to decline the opportunity to return, matching a trend seen in other large urban school systems nationwide.

That reality raises questions about the argument that has been made for weeks by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials that reopening schools will help reduce racial inequity gaps caused by remote learning — though the district repeated that belief in its announcement Wednesday,

“When we talk about offering more options for parents, we’re serving a large swath of our families who believe this is the best choice for their students,” Jackson said. “And we believe we have a moral obligation to do so.”

Reporter Nader Issa has the full story.

5:40 p.m. Biden, Pence set to get COVID-19 vaccine soon

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence are set to receive the COVID-19 vaccine soon.

According to two transition officials familiar with the matter, Biden will receive the vaccine publicly as early as next week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.

The White House says Pence and his wife, Karen, will receive the vaccine publicly on Friday.

Biden said on Tuesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, advised him to get the vaccine “sooner than later.” Biden has said that he wants to keep front-line health care workers and vulnerable people as the top priority as the vaccine is rolled out throughout the country.

Read the full story here.

5:25 p.m. Months into COVID-19 pandemic, seniors say wellness checks have been rare

Months after an ordinance was passed the City Council aimed at helping seniors through the coronavirus pandemic, some say they are still awaiting enforcement of the measure that calls for regular wellness checks.

“It’s a hit or miss depending on the management company,” said Debra Miller, who lives in a senior building and is a member of the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, a Chicago-based senior citizen advocacy group that pushed for the ordinance.

And with most COVID-19 deaths in Chicago found among victims 60 and older, residents in senior buildings, including those part of public housing, say they need better oversight of the measure in order to stay safe.

The “senior safety ordinance” was passed by the City Council in July, and it tasks senior building owners and managers with conducting wellness checks, establishing safety protocols, implementing a cleaning regimen and restricting access to a building during public health emergencies.

Read the full story here.

2:53 p.m. Illinois’ next shipment of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine cut in half by federal government, Pritzker says

A day after the first coronavirus vaccine doses went into Illinois health care workers’ arms, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday announced the state’s next vaccine shipments from the federal government will be cut roughly in half.

About 8 million doses initially were scheduled for distribution to hundreds of cities beginning next week through the federal “Operation Warp Speed” effort, but that number has been slashed to 4.3 million, Pritzker said during a COVID-19 briefing.

Another 8.8 million doses had been scheduled to go out the week after, but that’s also been downsized to 4.3 million, Pritzker said. From those totals, doses are distributed to states in proportion to their population.

The federal government sent out about 3 million doses in the first shipments this week, and Illinois’ allotment of about 109,000 still are expected to be administered to health care workers by the end of the week.

Read the full story here.

12:30 p.m. Cook County Jail was one of the nation’s largest COVID-19 hot spots last spring. It’s worse now

The number of detainees testing positive for the coronavirus at the Cook County Jail has soared to levels not seen since cases there last peaked in the spring, when it saw one of the largest outbreaks of confirmed cases of any location in the country.

Twenty-three detainees at the jail tested positive for the virus on Nov. 1, according to data from the sheriff’s office. Just over a month later, the jail set a new record for cases on Dec. 7, with 370.

That’s even higher than the previous peak, 307, on April 10.

The drastic increase in little more than a month illustrates just how difficult a task it is to control the virus’ spread inside correctional facilities and how quickly cases can rise.

It’s the situation Sheriff Tom Dart — who himself tested positive last month — warned about recently as he stood outside the jail and urged the public to take measures including wearing masks, socially distancing and remaining home as much as possible.

Releasing more detainees through alternatives to incarceration, such as home monitoring, would be the quickest way to bring cases down again — to protect not only detainees but also the community at large, advocates and public officials say.

However, previous attempts to do so have been met with criticism that inmates being released were contributing to spikes in crime, which sources said has made it difficult this fall to take the same action.

Reporter Matthew Hendrickson has the full story.

11:39 a.m. NFL won’t allow teams to create postseason bubbles to prevent coronavirus infections

NFL teams won’t be allowed to create local bubbles during the postseason by mandating that players stay in a hotel, except for the night before a game.

“Clubs may not require players and staff to stay at a hotel in their local area,” reads a league memo obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. “This decision is based upon an analysis of the frequency of positive cases in the league compared to the risk of significant spread among players and staff gathered for an extensive period of time at one hotel.”

Teams will be allowed to continue paying for players who want to move into a hotel to avoid the risk of catching COVID-19 from family or roommates throughout the postseason, according to the memo.

When teams stay in hotels before games, players and staff now will be required to wear a tracing device until they return to their rooms for the night whether staying at home or on the road.

Read the full story here.

10:54 a.m. Congressional leaders nearing deal on long-delayed COVID-19 relief bill

WASHINGTON — Top congressional leaders are nearing agreement on a long-delayed COVID-19 relief package, hoping to seal a deal as early as Wednesday that would extend aid to individuals and businesses and help ship coronavirus vaccines to millions.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a coauthor of a $908 billion bipartisan package, said leadership negotiators are close to agreement on legislation that would extend direct payments of perhaps $600 to most Americans. No. 2 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota confirmed the likely addition of direct payments in that range, as well as a $300-per-week bonus federal unemployment benefit to partially replace a $600-per-week benefit that expired this summer.

“We made major headway toward hammering out a bipartisan relief package,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The bill would include a new round of stimulus checks, enhanced federal unemployment insurance benefits, and other avenues for delivering aid to states, localities, territories and tribes, according to two people familiar with the talks and authorized to characterize them. Their statement said that a GOP-sought provision shielding businesses from COVID-19-related lawsuits would be dropped.

Read the full story here.

8:15 a.m. Pritzker announces $711 million in budget cuts in ‘first phase of our path forward’

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday he authorized more than $711 million in budget cuts in offices under his control for the current fiscal year in an attempt to close a nearly $4 billion budget gap.

“This gets us part of the way toward addressing the budget deficit,” Pritzker said at his daily coronavirus briefing. “For additional, and more permanent balancing of our budgets going forward, I will work with the legislature, but make no mistake: legislative action and engagement is required. While short term federal help may yet come, we need to take action to maintain fiscal stability over the long run and address the problems that plagued Illinois pre-pandemic.”

Pritzker said his administration has “scoured the budget” to try to reduce the effect of the cuts on residents but, with a move to a graduated income tax off the table, “there will be a real human impact here.”

“I’m sorry to say that we simply cannot prevent these losses from touching the real lives of our residents,” Pritzker said. “This is going to be tough.”

The cuts, which total $711.2 million, have already begun to be implemented, Pritzker said.

Rachel Hinton has the story.

New Cases

• On Tuesday, a total of 7,359 more COVID-19 cases and 117 more deaths were reported in Illinois.
• Tuesday’s new cases were diagnosed among 92,922 tests, lowering the state’s average positivity rate for an eighth straight day down to 8.6%.
• Two more employees have tested positive for the coronavirus in Cook County’s Office of the Chief Judge. A total of 216 employees working in Office of the Chief Judge have tested positive for COVID-19. Additionally, 17 judges have tested positive since the start of the pandemic.

Analysis & Commentary

5:20 p.m. At a time of pandemic, my clients keep dying

I opened my email at 8:30 in the morning and my heart sank. A “dear subscriber” notification, simple and plain, told me that my client Richard was no longer in Graham Correctional Center because he was deceased. There was no further information, no condolences offered, no way to follow up. Had I not signed up for these notifications — status updates that are useful when clients are transferred from institution to institution — no one would have told me that he died.

Richard, an affable and religious man who was bombarded by love from family and friends, was 71 when he died. When I met him earlier this year, he had served 37 years of a natural life sentence for robbing a grocery store in Champaign, Illinois, one of hundreds of mostly Black men condemned to die in prison on his “third strike.” He never hurt anyone, in that case or in any other. While in prison, he dedicated his life to his fellow prisoners, to his family, and to God. He studied the Bible and became an ordained minister. Trusted by both incarcerated people and correctional officers alike, Richard worked with the assistant warden and the prison chaplain.

When Richard died, a commutation petition seeking his release was sitting on the governor’s desk. He left behind seven brothers and sisters, each of whom was praying desperately for his return home.

The email coldly informing me of Richard’s death was the fourth I have received since COVID-19 took hold of the Illinois Department of Corrections. My clients keep dying.

Read the full commentary from Jennifer Soble, executive director of the Illinois Prison Project.

7:45 a.m. When the doctor becomes the patient

When I was writing Monday’s column on how hospitals are faring at this point in the COVID-19 epidemic, I came upon a digression too lengthy to fit in but too interesting to leave out.

I was talking with Dr. Roy Werner, director of the department of emergency medicine at Roseland Community Hospital, about whether medical personnel are more at risk in the intensive care unit, masked and gowned and leaning over a COVID-19 patient on a ventilator, or sitting in their living room at home with their children traipsing in and out.

“My family has been fantastically supportive,” said Werner, who lives in Huntley. “I have a wife who really gets it. We have two teenaged kids, and I’ve been able to explain it to them. I had COVID a few weeks ago, stayed in one room of the house, the kids did their own things.”

I asked how the illness affected him.

“It scared the daylights out of me,” he said. “The shortness of breath, the pain. I was very fortunate to get through it in 10 to 14 days. I feel very blessed. My wife took a little bit of a chance, trying to take care of me. For a while, it felt like I was in a prison. She would put stuff on a table and push it into the room with her foot.”

Did experiencing the illness himself give him any insight into treating COVID-19 patients?

“It did, it absolutely did,” Werner said. “Watching families not be able to be at the bedside of a loved one, whether sick or dying. Sitting with COVID in my own home, not being able to touch or hug or even be in the same room with my children or my wife. It’s the most depressing, horrible thing I took away from the virus. It’s miserable.”

Keep reading Neil Steinberg’s column here.