State nears COVID-19 intervention in Missouri border area

Metro East region nears 8 percent positivity rate that is ‘failsafe’ for state action

Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at Ridgely Elementary School in Springfield in this Feb. 5 file photo. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Six of 11 regions flash warning sign for positivity rate increase

By JERRY NOWICK
Capitol News Illinois
jnowicki@capitolnewsillinois.com

SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois Department of Public Health announced another 1,076 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Illinois on Tuesday as the rolling, seven-day test positivity rate remained at 3.8 percent.

IDPH also reported that the rolling positivity rate in Region 4 of the state’s COVID-19 mitigation plan — which includes the Metro East area on the Missouri border — reached 7.8 percent as of July 25, or slightly less than the 8 percent mark that, if sustained for three days, would necessitate state intervention to mitigate the virus’s spread.

When Gov. JB Pritzker laid out the state’s coronavirus mitigation plan on July 15, he said if a region has three consecutive days averaging greater than an 8 percent positivity rate on tests conducted, it would be a “failsafe” metric requiring immediate action. 

Mitigation efforts would occur in three tiers, he said at the time, and would including rolling back some sectors of the economy to how they looked in previous phases of the state’s COVID-19 reopening plan.

In “higher risk” settings, such as indoor bars and restaurants, some restrictions could be triggered “automatically.” These include reduced indoor dining capacity and suspended indoor bar service in tier one, followed by suspended indoor dining in tier two, then takeout only in tier three. Other mitigation strategies would occur in other sectors of the economy.

Additional meeting size restrictions would also be considered, along with remote work guidance or safety requirements for offices.

In the other 10 regions, the rolling positivity rate was as low as 2.9 percent in Region 6, which includes much of eastern Illinois, but that rate had increased for nine of the past 10 days as of July 25. In southern Illinois’ Region 5, the positivity rate was 6.5 percent as of July 25, an increase of 2.7 percentage points over one week prior.

All of the other regions ranged from 3.9 percent in western Illinois to 5.8 percent in Will and Kankakee counties. Six of the 11 regions had seen their positivity rate tick upward for at least seven of the past 10 days — another warning level, according to the state’s mitigation plan. None of them, however, had seen the necessary hospitalization increases to warrant state action for rolling back reopening efforts.

The new cases reported by IDPH were among 28,331 test results completed over the previous 24 hours, making for a one-day statewide positivity rate of 3.8 percent.

The department also reported another 30 COVID-19-related deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities since the pandemic first reached Illinois to 7,446 among 173,731 confirmed cases throughout the state’s 102 counties.

The number of hospital beds in use by COVID-19 patients remains relatively level near pandemic lows. At the end of Monday, 1,383 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 329 in intensive care unit beds and 128 on ventilators.

COVID-19 data collection

Meanwhile, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has joined a coalition of attorneys general across the U.S. looking to return COVID-19 data collection to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — not solely the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

In a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. DHHS Secretary Alex Azar, Raoul and 21 other attorneys general urged the department to “restore the CDC to its rightful role as the primary authority over and source of information about the nation’s public health data.”

They look to overturn a directive displacing the CDC with HHS, claiming the directive “imperils public health and dangerously undermines transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“The CDC has nearly 75 years of experience in mitigating the spread of diseases and illnesses,” Raoul said in a news release. “Removing the CDC from the system for reporting hospital COVID-19 data will significantly inhibit its ability to battle this pandemic which has sickened and taken the lives of thousands throughout the United States, including more than 7,400 in Illinois.”

Also signing the letter were attorneys general of California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

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.

Above is from:  https://www.capitolnewsillinois.com/NEWS/metro-east-region-nears-8-percent-positivity-rate-that-is-failsafe-for-state-action

July 28: 1076 New COVID-19 Cases in Illinois

Illinois COVOD 19 cases now number 173,731; there were 30 additional deaths which now total 7446.  Boone County reports an additional 10 cases with no new deaths.

Even Reagan no longer supports Trump?

Trump criticises Reagan Foundation after request to stop using late president's image

Gino Spocchia

,

The Independent•July 27, 2020

US president Donald Trump, who hit back at fundraising complaints using Reagan imagery: EPA

Donald Trump has hit back at the Ronald Reagan presidential foundation for asking him to stop using the former president’s name and image to raise funds.

In comments posted to Twitter on Sunday, the president called-out the foundation’s chairman over demands that the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee (RNC) stop raising money with Reagan’s name and image.

Mr Trump told the foundation’s chairman and The Washington Post CEO, Frederick J Ryan Jr, that he would “win anyway” in November, without the paper’s support.

“So the Washington Post is running the Reagan Foundation, and RINO Paul Ryan is on the Board of Fox, which has been terrible,” wrote Mr Trump.

“We will win anyway, even with the phony Fox News suppression polls (which have been seriously wrong for 5 years)!”

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s complaint came after the 40th US president’s name and image were used to sell commemorative Reagan-Trump coins.

Melissa Giller, the foundation’s chief marketing officer, told The Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty last week that the RNC had agreed “within seconds” to stop using Regan’s name.

Meanwhile, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told The New York Post that the Reagan foundation’s demands were “no surprise”.

“It should be no surprise that the publisher and CEO of the Washington Post wants to interfere with President Trump’s re-election campaign,” said Mr Murtaugh.

“As Republicans, we all honour Ronald Reagan’s contribution to this country and our party,” he added.

Mr Trump, who has continued attacks on unsupportive US media outlets as his poll numbers slide against Democrat Joe Biden, has previously invoked Reagan.

That includes the apparent repurposing of Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan which said “Let’s make America great again”.

The Independent has contacted the foundation for comment.

Hydroxychloroquine cure is back on Trump agenda

Trump again pushes unproven drug as COVID-19 treatment

POLITICS

by: DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

Posted: Jul 28, 2020 / 07:28 AM CDT / Updated: Jul 28, 2020 / 07:36 AM CDT

President Donald Trump wears a face mask as he participates in a tour of Bioprocess Innovation Center at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, Monday, July 27, 2020, in Morrisville, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A week after appearing to project a more serious tone about the coronaviru s, President Donald Trump is back to pushing unproven claims that an anti-malaria drug is an effective treatment and challenging the credibility of the nation’s leading infectious disease expert.

Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed back Tuesday, saying he will keep doing his job.

Numerous studies, meanwhile, have shown that the drug, hydroxychloroquine, is not an effective treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently withdrew an order that allowed the drug’s use as a emergency treatment for COVID-19.

Yet overnight, after returning from a trip to North Carolina where he promoted efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, Trump retweeted a series of tweets advocating for hydroxychloroquine.

The president also shared a post from the Twitter account for a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, a former top White House adviser to Trump, accusing Fauci of misleading the public over hydroxychloroquine.

Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force, pushed back Tuesday during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I go along with the FDA,” said Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in coronavirus disease.”

It’s not the first time Fauci has come under attack from Trump and those close to him.

The president’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, who has clashed with Fauci over hydroxychloroquine, recently penned a scathing attack on the doctor that was published by USA Today. The newspaper later said the opinion piece did not meet its standards.

In recent nationally televised interviews, Trump himself has described Fauci as “a bit of an alarmist” and accused him of making “mistakes” in his coronavirus guidance to the American people.

Asked if he can continue to do his job when Trump continues to publicly question his credibility, Fauci said Tuesday he’ll press ahead “no matter what” because of the stakes involved.

“I don’t tweet. I don’t even read them, so I don’t really want to go there,” Fauci said. “I just will continue to do my job no matter what comes out because I think it’s very important. We’re in the middle of a crisis with regard to an epidemic, a pandemic. This is what I do. This is what I’ve been trained for my entire professional life and I’ll continue to do it.”

Asked about claims he’s been misleading the public, Fauci said: “I have not been misleading the American public under any circumstances.”

COVID-19 hits Belvidere Sports Camp

Belvidere Dist. 100: Positive Covid-19 test leads to sports camps canceling

(WIFR)

By Hope Salman

Published: Jul. 27, 2020 at 5:11 PM CDT|Updated: 14 hours ago

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ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) -

A person from the Belvidere School District with ties to the sports department, tests positive for Covid-19.

Superintendent Dan Woestman won’t say if the individual is a student or staff member, but says basketball and football training and practices are canceled for now.

The person is part of the summer training sports program. Woestman would not confirm which school is impacted, but the district and the health department notified any families that may have come in contact with the person. All other training and practices will continue.

“Protocol for coming to school for classes that are coming up here in the fall, for athletic or extracurricular activities, or even visitors who are entering the schools- if they have any signs of Covid-19 or symptoms of Covid-19 or they just don’t feel well, they should not come to school,” said Woestman.

The district is following phase 4 guidelines from the state. Administrators say there is a lot unknown about how sports will be impacted this fall. They plan to release a more specific safety plan next week.

Above is from:  https://www.wifr.com/2020/07/27/belvidere-dist-100-positive-covid-19-test-leads-to-sports-camps-canceling/