June 14, 2020 coronavirus news: Latest updates

The Latest

Illinois announces 19 additional coronavirus deaths, lowest single-day total since April 2

Rick Bowmer/AP Photo (file photo)

For the first time in more than two months, Illinois has recorded a day with fewer than 20 new coronavirus deaths.

Public health officials announced Sunday an additional 19 deaths from COVID-19, bringing the state’s pandemic death toll to 6,308.

Although numbers are usually lower on weekends due to a lack of reporting, Sunday’s data is still the lowest the state has seen since April 2, when 16 deaths were announced. The state announced 29 new deaths Saturday.

The Illinois Department of Public Health also said an additional 672 people tested positive for COVID-19. That brings the state’s total case count to 132,543; the vast majority have since recovered.

Read the full story here.

News

2 p.m. Oprah, Miguel Cervantes, Common among guests of star-studded CPS virtual graduation

With the coronavirus pandemic making it impossible to hold a traditional graduation ceremony for millions of graduates across the U.S., organizers had to get creative with this year’s springtime rite of passage.

To celebrate the achievements of its some 26,000 graduating seniors, Chicago Public Schools called in the bigwigs to help ensure this year’s digital event is just as special and memorable as past ones.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot will be joined Sunday by several Chicago celebrities — including Oprah Winfrey, rapper Common and “Hamilton” star Miguel Cervantes — to honor this year’s graduating class during an hourlong TV special, dubbed “Graduation 2020: For Chicago, By Chicago.”

The virtual graduation, set to start at 1 p.m., will be emceed by Cervantes, a Chicago native, and will include a commencement address from Oprah.

Read the full story and watch the live stream from the City of Chicago here.

12:58 p.m. Tenants behind on rent in pandemic face harassment, eviction

BALTIMORE — Jeremy Rooks works the evening shift at a Georgia fast-food restaurant these days to avoid being on the street past dusk. He needs somewhere to go at night: He and his wife are homeless after the extended-stay motel where they had lived since Thanksgiving evicted them in April when they couldn’t pay their rent.

They should have been protected because the state’s Supreme Court has effectively halted evictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Rooks said the owner still sent a man posing as a sheriff’s deputy, armed with a gun, to throw the couple out a few days after rent was due.

The pandemic has shut housing courts and prompted most states and federal authorities to initiate policies protecting renters from eviction. But not everyone is covered and a number of landlords — some desperate to pay their mortgages themselves — are turning to threats and harassment to force tenants out.

“Every day, they tried to basically get us out of there. It was basically like a game to them,” said Rooks, who wasn’t able to make his rent at the Marietta, Georgia, motel after his employer paid him late and his wife was laid off in the pandemic. “One of us had to stay in a room at all times because they wouldn’t redo the keys for us.”

Read the full story here.

11:26 a.m. Trump rally called ‘dangerous move’ in age of coronavirus

WASHINGTON — After months away from the campaign trail, President Donald Trump plans to rally his supporters this coming Saturday for the first time since most of the country was shuttered by the coronavirus. Trump will head to Tulsa, Oklahoma — a state that has seen relatively few COVID-19 cases.

But health experts question the decision, citing the danger of infection spreading among the crowd and sparking outbreaks when people return to their homes. The Trump campaign itself acknowledges the risk in a waiver attendees must agree to absolving them of any responsibility should people get sick.

What makes the rally high risk?

Trump’s rally will be held indoors, at a 19,000-seat arena that has canceled all other events through the end of July. Scientists believe the virus spreads far more easily in crowded enclosed spaces than it does outdoors, where circulating air has a better chance of dispersing virus particles.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlines the highest risk events for transmission of the coronavirus this way: “Large in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from outside the local area.” The CDC recommends cloth masks in places where people might shout or chant.

Read the full report here.

10:15 a.m. Virtual waste: Despite pandemic, schools not taking advantage of state’s robust online course network

With little fanfare in January, Illinois debuted an upgraded collection of online courses featuring hundreds of classes from agriscience to anthropology offered by multiple providers. They were available to any school in the state.

Within months, the global coronavirus pandemic shut down school campuses and pushed every student in the state into remote learning.

The state’s fortuitously timed redesign was poised to fill a desperate new need — education delivered via the internet. But oddly enough, the courses under the state umbrella have remained unused in some areas, even as school districts rushed toward remote learning.

While states like Virginia expanded their virtual programs and made them free to schools, Illinois can’t even say how many students have taken advantage of its online courses this spring. The state didn’t even mention its new catalog in its remote learning guidance.

With the redesign, Illinois kept the non-profit Illinois Virtual School that is run out of Peoria and added five private providers into the mix. But one of those new online course providers, the experienced Arizona State University, attracted no — zero — Illinois students. And some district leaders say they know little to nothing about the newly expanded catalog of courses.

Meanwhile, the state’s decision to expand the number of providers — ostensibly so more students could choose from a larger menu of courses — left less money for its existing familiar program, which was seeing a sudden increase in demand.

The Illinois Virtual School lost a state grant that had accounted for nearly half of its operating budget. It slashed its budget more than 18%, to $1.8 million, and cut teacher salaries by 30% to keep courses available. As demand surges, some of its courses have hit capacity, but the school has scant resources to hire more teachers.

Now, federal coronavirus relief funds intended precisely to shore up remote learning could boost the state’s efforts. But it’s not certain what Illinois’ plan is to seize that opportunity.

Read the full story here.

8:52 a.m. Curbside diploma service for Chicago high schoolers graduating in the age of COVID-19

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Thousands of students in Chicago and beyond are marking a key milestone this weekend — and they’re finding out what socially distant celebrations look like in a world upended by the coronavirus.

That was the case Saturday morning at Whitney Young Magnet High School, which held a drive-thru ceremony for the Class of 2020 on the Near West Side campus.

Students arrived by car with their families at staggered times and, with face masks in tow, crossed the makeshift stage one by one to receive diplomas.

And instead of a handshake, each graduate got a spritz of hand sanitizer.

Check out our gallery from Saturday’s event here.

7:45 a.m. For deaf people, face masks with windows mean more than smiles

SAN DIEGO — Michael Conley felt especially isolated these past few months: A deaf man, he was prevented from reading lips by the masks people wore to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But then he met Ingrid Helton, a costume designer who sewed him a solution – masks with plastic windows for hearing people to wear, allowing lip readers to see mouths move.

She has started a business to provide the windowed masks, and she’s not alone. A half-dozen startups are doing the same. They have been inundated with orders — and not only from friends and family of the roughly 48 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing.

“You can tell so much by a facial expression, so it’s proving that it can be helpful to everybody,” Helton said.

Read the full story and see pictures of the windowed masks here.

New cases

• Public health officials on Saturday announced the latest 29 deaths attributed to the coronavirus in Illinois, raising the state’s toll to 6,289.
• “Days of Our Lives” star Judi Evans has been diagnosed with COVID-19, and nearly lost her legs due to related blood clots, her publicist says.
• Another employee at the Cook County Circuit Court clerk’s office has tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the overall total to 25, and three workers have received positive antibody test results.
• Two more detainees and an employee at Cook County Juvenile detention center tested positive for COVID-19.
• Federal health authorities have received reports of nearly 26,000 nursing home residents dying from COVID-19 across the country.

Analysis & Commentary

12:46 p.m. Clinical trials press forward in age of COVID

Jim Butler is receiving his monthly 45-minute infusion of drugs.

What kind of drugs? He doesn’t know. Nor do the nurses administering them. Could be an experimental medicine that will help his brain fight Alzheimer’s disease. Or could be a placebo that does nothing.

Only one doctor conducting the medical research at Great Lakes Clinical Trials knows what drug Butler is getting, and even he doesn’t know what the effect will be.

None of this influences Butler’s determination to be here.

”I got an Alzheimer’s diagnosis four years ago,” said Butler, 71, who describes the disease as causing “multiple times a day, cognitive hiccups, confusion.”

One thing he is not confused about is the importance of participating in research.

”The simplest reason is I like to be very proactive about my diagnosis,” he said. “My game plan is not to get overwhelmed and unsettled at these things. To try to smile at them, dismiss them, let them go. A clinical trial is an enormously great way to do that.”

Clinical trials are the minor leagues of medicine. Before drug companies can sign up a star cure to wow the public, they need to know if it can deliver. To do that, they spend billions of dollars and commission hundreds of small clinics like Great Lakes Clinical Trials, which opened in Andersonville in 2014. There is a second location in Arlington Heights.

Read Neil Steinberg’s full column here.

7:04 a.m. The NFL can guard against COVID-19 all it wants, but players still have to tackle each other

The NFL really has this pandemic thing figured out, doesn’t it?

The latest science-driven protocols will be in place when players return to team facilities in the coming weeks. Testing for COVID-19 will be a regular occurrence. Proper social distancing will be observed. Masks will be mandatory at team meetings. Locker rooms will be cleansed and disinfected so often you might mistake them for operating rooms.

We expect that from a league that prides itself on military-like precision.

But there’s one little thing that keeps tugging at the sleeve: Eventually, the players are going to have to touch each other. Touching is sort of a necessity when it comes to huddling and blocking and — this is a biggie — hitting, which is the whole point of football.

Touching goes against the concept of keeping 6 feet away from the person closest to you. Tackling sneers at social distancing and, further, would blow it up like a defenseless receiver if it could. And what’s gang tackling but a renunciation of everything we’ve learned about keeping the coronavirus at bay?

A football game is a buffet table of germs. This virus will be on the menu. There are too many people involved in the NFL for it not to be.

Read the full commentary from sports columnist Rick Morrissey here.