Thursday, September 10, 2020

Illinois absentee ballots

Important Information from:  https://www.vote.org/absentee-ballot/illinois/

Illinois absentee ballot deadlines

  • In Person: Received 1 day before Election Day.
  • By Mail: Received 5 days before Election Day.
  • Online: Received 5 days before Election Day.
  • Voted ballots are due: Postmarked by Election Day and received by 14 days after Election Day.

Illinois absentee ballot rules

Any registered Illinois voter may apply for an absentee ballot and vote by mail.

Illinois absentee ballot directions

  1. Use our Absentee Ballot Tool to prepare your application.
  2. Sign and date the form. This is very important!
  3. Return your completed application to your Local Election Office as soon as possible. We'll provide the mailing address for you.
  4. All Local Election Offices will accept mailed or hand-delivered forms. If it's close to the deadline, call and see if your Local Election Office will let you fax or email the application.
  5. Double-check the deadlines and be sure to cast your voted ballot on time to be sure it is counted.
  6. Please contact your Local Election Office if you have any further questions about the exact process.

Once you receive your ballot...

  • Once you receive the ballot, carefully read and follow the instructions.
  • Sign and date where indicated.
  • Mail your voted ballot back to the address indicated on the return envelope.
  • Double-check the deadlines and be sure to cast your voted ballot on time to be sure it is counted

COVID-19 at NIU

NIU reports lowest single-day coronavirus count since Aug. 28

By Daily Chronicle 7:48 PM

Signs on the entrance to New Residence Hall at Northern Illinois University reminds students to wear a mask as they enter the building Aug. 19 during the first of five move-in days at NIU in DeKalb. Students, parents, staff and volunteer helpers were required to observe coronavirus safety precautions set out by the school including wearing masks and maintaining social distance.

Mark Busch file photo – mbusch@shawmedia.com

Caption

Omar Matos, a first-year law student from Texarkana, Texas, walks past the NIU sign at Northern Illinois University Sept. 1. Masks can be seen on students all over campus as they adjust to attending classes amid the pamdemic.

Mark Busch file photo – mbusch@shawmedia.com

Caption




As a public service, Shaw Media will provide open access to information related to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) emergency. Sign up for the newsletter here

DeKALB – Northern Illinois University announced five new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases on campus to 163, the lowest single-day count since Aug. 28.

The school also reported eight new recoveries, bringing the total of recoveries to 40.

All five new cases were in students. The school hasn't reported a case in an employee since Sept. 1, and just three cases have been reported in employees. Two of those have recovered.

According to the school, 28% of its quarantine and isolation areas are in use.

The university welcomed students back to campus Aug. 19, and classes began Aug. 24. Students living on campus were required to submit proof of a negative COVID-19 test prior to move-in. NIU reported that of the 2,037 tested prior to move-in, 39 tested positive, and the university will welcome them back once their quarantine period is over.

The school also reported Tuesday that its surveillance testing program returned one positive case out of 231 tests last week. The program tests about 125 students a day at random as an attempt to better assess and catch viral outbreaks on campus more quickly to mitigate continued community spread. The positivity rate last week was 0.4%.

Although specific surveillance testing results will be reported weekly on Mondays, positive tests produced from the program will be included in daily statistics.

Daily COVID-19 case data from the DeKalb County Health Department may not reflect daily data from NIU because some students or employees may live outside the county and still test positive for the virus.

NIU staff are encouraged to get tested via state testing sites or their health care provider on their own. Students living off campus in Greek housing and otherwise also are not required to get tested, although anyone experiencing symptoms is asked to remain at home.

Students living on campus pay a $7.90 per credit hour health fee to use nasal swab testing services at Northwestern Medicine Student Health Center in the Health Services Building on campus.

Above is from:  https://www.shawmediaillinois.com/2020/09/10/niu-reports-lowest-single-day-coronavirus-count-since-aug-28/a6zz9hs/

Roundup of Illinois Higher Education

Higher education roundup

Thursday, Sep 10, 2020

* WIND’s Amy Jacobson tried pressing the governor today on the seriousness of COVID-19 on college campuses after Gov. Pritzker spoke about his trip to Bloomington yesterday and the quarantine at Bradley University

Jacobson: It should be emphasized that most of these people are asymptomatic, sometimes no symptoms at all and of out of 5,000 colleges across the country only five have been hospitalized.

Pritzker: So what’s your point? Do you think that unless you’ve been hospitalized it’s not worth worrying about?

Jacobson: No, no, no, I’m just saying, of all of the college students in Illinois, how many are in the hospital? Do you have that number?

Pritzker: I don’t have that number, but I mean, I think you’re discounting the idea that getting COVID-19 is serious business. Making sure that someone who has COVID-19 is not spreading it to other people is the reason that you want to quarantine people, so that’s that’s critically important. I know there are lots of people who think ‘Well gee somebody didn’t have to go to the hospital, or they didn’t die and therefore, well there’s nothing to it.’ That’s just not accurate. I realize that there are people, particularly followers of the president, who believe that that’s true that it’s okay to spread COVID-19 because hey if you’re not showing symptoms of it, then it’s fine, Well guess what? When people are not wearing masks, when people are just running around asymptomatic and they’re not getting tested but they are positive, they’re spreading it to other people. And the result is that it’s going into environments in which people who are vulnerable are going to be sick and are going to go to the hospital. And by the way, you should take a look, our hospitalizations in the state are rising. And this is problematic, so we’re watching very closely, even though we’ve got our positivity rates moving in the right direction in many regions, that hasn’t kept people from going to the hospital because, someone who is more likely to end up in the hospital getting it versus somebody who is less likely to end up in the hospital, you just don’t know. You don’t know who’s got a comorbidity. Everybody who knows they’ve got one, that’s fine, you know you’ve got a comorbidity and you should take extra care. Many people don’t know that they have a comorbidity yet, and then they get COVID-19 and then they end up with a problem.

* Meanwhile

Bradley University in central Illinois is requiring its entire student body to quarantine for two weeks because of clusters of COVID-19 on campus and is reverting to remote learning, officials announced Tuesday.

Officials of the private university said they have linked a spike of the coronavirus to off-campus gatherings. The Peoria university is requiring students to limit nonessential interactions, stay in their off-campus apartments, residence halls or Greek houses and take classes remotely beginning Tuesday.

In announcing the measure, the university said it has tallied about 50 COVID-19 cases so far, adding emergency measures are needed to respond to the outbreak without disrupting academic progress.

* Over to ISU

Students who gathered en masse and maskless to see YouTube personalities the NELK Boys could face consequences that include suspension, Illinois State University President Larry Dietz said Wednesday.

ISU authorities are working with the Normal Police Department to investigate Tuesday night’s visit by the popular group, stylized as NELK or NELK Boys on YouTube. Its members are known for producing videos of pranks that generate millions of pageviews, but officials said the YouTube stars’ visit to town led to large, flash mob-style gatherings that ultimately were broken up by police.

* Up to DeKalb

The number of reported COVID-19 cases on the Northern Illinois University campus nearly doubled over the four-day weekend, as the school reported 73 new cases, bringing the total to 150.

The school also reported 18 new recoveries, bringing the total to 24. The data represents cases of the viral respiratory disease identified on campus since Friday.

All 73 new cases were in students. The school hasn’t reported a case in an employee since Sept. 1, and just three cases have been reported in employees.

According to the school, 31.4% of its quarantine and isolation areas are in use, down from 54% Friday.

* Tribune

In an early glimpse of the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on college enrollment, some Illinois universities are seeing declines in international students and freshman class sizes but also a higher number of graduate students, who are taking advantage of online programs.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the state’s largest college, undergraduate enrollment fell by about 350 students from record levels last year, the school announced Wednesday. The freshman class size also dropped by about 1.8% to 7,530 students, the school said, and an additional 277 students deferred admission compared with about 60 in a typical year. […]

About 17,800 graduate students enrolled at UIUC, up by 9% from a high last year. Some 42% of graduate students are taking fully online programs, with big increases seen in the Gies College of Business and Grainger College of Engineering. Still, about 2,000 graduate students chose to delay admission.

Citing the pandemic, UIUC said about 576 international undergraduate students discontinued their studies for the fall 2020 semester. Most new international students are taking classes online, with freshmen from China rising by 3.9%.

* WIU press release

For the first time in 10 years, new student enrollment at Western Illinois University has increased.

The number of new freshmen enrolling at Western this fall stands at 1,064, 18.9 percent over Fall 2019, while new transfer students total 721 (9.2 percent over Fall 2019) and new graduate students stand at 569 (10.3 percent over Fall 2019), for a total new student increase of 13.7 percent. In addition, the grade point average (GPA) of the incoming freshman class has increased to 3.49 (compared to 3.40 in Fall 2019).

Total enrollment as of the 10th day is 7,490, according to 10th-day data released by WIU’s Institutional Research and Planning.

Besides the increase in new students, WIU’s Fall 2020 enrollment has increased 7.1 percent over Spring 2020. According to Gary Swegan, interim associate vice president for enrollment management, Western has not seen a spring-to-fall increase since 2016.

* EIU

Eastern Illinois University announced on Tuesday that its fall 2020 enrollment has increased by approximately 10.5% despite the challenges posted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figures from Eastern’s 10th-day enrollment report show that total enrollment increased from 7,806 students in fall 2019 to 8,626 this fall. The university reported that this marks the third consecutive year of its growth in institutional enrollment. That growth reportedly includes graduate student enrollment increasing by 5 percent from 1,577 to 1,657 and undergraduate enrollment increasing 11.8 percent from 6,229 to 6,969.

* NIU

Reversing a decade-long trend, student enrollment is up at NIU despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our sister station WLBK reports that NIU student enrollment this fall is up 160 students from last year to a student body of 16,769. Enrollment had been falling since 2009 when NIU had more than 24,000.

The university says this year’s growth was driven by a freshman class that is eight percent larger than last year and improving retention of first-year students by six percentage points.

* SIUE

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s School of Nursing (SON) record enrollment of 1,877 students highlights SIUE’s fall 2020 enrollment picture. The University’s overall graduate and professional enrollment hits 2,918 students, its highest mark in 43 years.

With its 5 percent increase from fall 2019, the SON saw record enrollment for the second consecutive year. SIUE’s graduate and professional enrollment includes 849 doctoral students, from all levels, the most in the history of the institution.

Twenty-nine percent of the SIUE student body reports an ethnicity or race other than white, making this fall’s student body the most ethnically diverse for the University. Enrollment includes record numbers of Latinx students (637) and students who identify as Asian, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (370). […]

SIUE total enrollment is 1.5 percent behind fall 2019 (13,061). The University welcomed 1,554 new freshmen or 113 (6.7 percent) fewer than last fall.

* And good news from SIUC

The number of first-time college students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale increased by 31.2% this fall. The total reflects a 32.9% increase in new first-time students enrolling from the Southern Illinois region.

The university also saw continued growth in the freshman to sophomore retention rate, reflecting the percentage of last year’s first-time freshmen who returned this fall. This year’s rate is 80.6%, the highest in 20 years and up from 72% in 2017 and 75% last year. […]

Total enrollment stands at 11,366, a decline of 2.8% from fall 2019. The university has seen declines between 8% and 12% in each of the last four years.

Above is from: https://capitolfax.com/2020/09/10/higher-education-roundup/

Preliminary studies points to heart problems for youthful COVID-19 patients.

Post-COVID heart damage alarms researchers: 'There was a black hole' in infected cells

Suzanne Smalley

Reporter

,

Yahoo NewsSeptember 10, 2020

Ad: 22s

Shelby Hedgecock contracted the coronavirus in April and thought she had fought through the worst of it — the intense headaches, severe gastrointestinal distress and debilitating fatigue — but early last month she started experiencing chest pain and a pounding heartbeat. Her doctor put her on a cardiac monitor and ordered blood tests, which indicated that the previously healthy 29-year-old had sustained heart damage, likely from her bout with COVID-19.

“I never thought I would have to worry about a heart attack at 29 years old,” Hedgecock told Yahoo News in an interview. “I didn’t have any complications before COVID-19 — no preexisting conditions, no heart issues. I can deal with my taste and smell being dull, I can fight through the debilitating fatigue, but your heart has to last you a really long time.”

Hedgecock’s primary-care physician has referred her to a cardiologist she will see this week; the heart monitor revealed that Hedgecock’s pulse rate is wildly irregular, ranging from 49 to 189 beats per minute, and she has elevated inflammatory markers and platelet counts. She was told to go to the emergency room if her chest pain intensifies before she can see the specialist. A former personal trainer who is now out of breath just from walking around the room, Hedgecock is worried about what the future holds.

She is far from alone in her struggle. Dr. Ossama Samuel is a cardiologist at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where he routinely sees coronavirus survivors who are contending with cardiac complications. Samuel said his team has treated three young and otherwise healthy coronavirus patients who have developed myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle — weeks to months after recovering from the virus.

Shelby Hedgecock in a hospital bed. (Shelby Hedgecock)

Shelby Hedgecock in a hospital bed. (Shelby Hedgecock)

Myocarditis can affect how the heart pumps blood and trigger rapid or abnormal heart rhythms. It is particularly dangerous for athletes, doctors say, because it can go undetected and can result in a heart attack during strenuous exercise. In recent weeks, some collegiate athletes have reported cardiac complications from the coronavirus, underscoring the seriousness of the condition.

Last month, former Florida State basketball center Michael Ojo died from a heart attack in Serbia; Ojo had recovered from the coronavirus before he collapsed on the basketball court. An Ohio State University cardiologist found that between 10 and 13 percent of university athletes who had recovered from COVID-19 had myocarditis. When the Big Ten athletic conference announced the cancellation of its season last month, Commissioner Kevin Warren cited the risk of heart failure in athletes. Researchers have estimated that up to 20 percent of people who get the coronavirus sustain heart damage.

Samuel said he feels an obligation to warn people, particularly since some of the patients he and Mount Sinai colleagues have seen with myocarditis had only mild cases of the coronavirus months ago.

“We are now seeing people three months after COVID who have pericarditis [inflammation of the sac around the heart] or myocarditis,” Samuel said. He said he believes a small fraction of coronavirus survivors are sustaining heart damage, “but when a disease is so widespread it is concerning that a tiny fraction is still sizable.”

Samuel said he worries particularly about athletes participating in team sports, since many live together and spend time in close quarters. Teammates may all get the coronavirus and recover together, Samuel said, but “the one who really gets that crazy myocarditis could be at risk of dying through exercise or training.”

“It’s a concern about what do you do: Should we do sports in general, should we do it in schools, should we do it in college, should we just do it for professionals who understand the risk and they're getting paid?” Samuel asked. “I hope we don’t scare the public, but we should make people aware.”

Samuel is recommending that patients recovering from COVID-19 with myocarditis avoid workouts for three to six months.

Todd McDevitt, who runs a stem-cell lab at Gladstone Institutes, which is affiliated with the University of California at San Francisco, recently published images that show how the coronavirus can directly invade the heart muscle. McDevitt said he was so alarmed when he saw a sample of heart muscle cells in a petri dish get “diced” by the coronavirus that he had trouble sleeping for nights afterward.

Todd McDevitt. (Facebook)

Todd McDevitt. (Facebook)

McDevitt said his team’s research was spurred by their desire to understand if the coronavirus is entering heart cells and how it is affecting them. He was surprised to see the heart muscle samples he was studying react to a very small amount of the coronavirus, usually within 24 to 48 hours. He said the virus decimated the heart cells in his petri dishes.

“Cell nuclei — the hubs of all the genetic information, all of the nuclear DNA — in many of the cells were gone,” McDevitt said. “There was a black hole literally where we would normally see the nuclear DNA. That’s also pretty bizarre.”

While McDevitt’s study has not yet been peer-reviewed — it is still in pre-print — he said he felt compelled to share the findings as soon as possible. He said his team also sampled tissues from three COVID-19 patient autopsies and found similar damage in the heart muscles of those patients, none of whom had been flagged for myocarditis or heart problems while they were alive.

“This is probably not the whole story yet, but we think we have insights into the beginning of when the virus would get into some of these people and what it might be doing that is concerning enough that we should probably let people know, because clinicians need to be thinking about this,” McDevitt said in an interview. “We don’t have any means of bringing heart muscle back. ... This virus is [causing] a very different type of injury, and one we haven't seen before.”

McDevitt said the chopped-up heart muscles he and his colleagues saw are so concerning because when the microfibers in the muscle are damaged, the heart can’t properly contract.

“If heart muscle cells are damaged and they can’t regenerate themselves, then what you’re looking at is someone who could prematurely have heart failure or heart disease due to the virus,” McDevitt said. “This could be a warning sign for a potential wave of heart disease that we could see in the future, and it’s in the survivors — that’s the concern.”

McDevitt said he believes the risk of heart disease is serious and one people should consider as they assess their own risk of getting the coronavirus.

“I am more scared today of contracting the virus, by far, than I was four months ago,” he said.

In lab experiments, infection of heart muscle cells with SARS-CoV-2 caused long fibers to break apart into small pieces, shown above. (Gladstone)

In lab experiments, infection of heart muscle cells with SARS-CoV-2 caused long fibers to break apart into small pieces, shown above. (Gladstone)

The medical journal the Lancet recently reported that an 11-year-old child had died of myocarditis and heart failure after a bout of COVID-induced multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). An autopsy showed coronavirus embedded in the child’s cardiac tissue.

A recent study from Germany found that 78 percent of patients who had recovered from the coronavirus and who had only mild to moderate symptoms while ill with the disease had indications of cardiac involvement on MRIs conducted more than two months after their initial infection. Lead investigator Eike Nagel said it is concerning to see such widespread cardiac impact; six in 10 of the patients Nagel’s team studied experienced ongoing myocardial inflammation.

“We found an astonishingly high level of cardiac involvement approximately two months after COVID infection,” Nagel said in an email. “These changes are much milder than observed in patients with severe acute myocarditis.”

The scale of the cardiac impact on relatively healthy, young patients surprised many doctors. Nagel said the findings are significant “on a population basis,” and that the impact of COVID-19 on the heart must be studied more.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow. (UCLA)

Dr. Gregg Fonarow. (UCLA)

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, chief of UCLA’s Division of Cardiology and director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, said the picture is evolving, but the new studies showing cardiac impact in even young people with mild cases of COVID-19 have raised troubling new questions.

“We really do need to take seriously individuals that have had the infection and are having continued symptoms, [and] not just dismiss those symptoms,” Fonarow said. “There could be, in those who had milder or even asymptomatic cases, the potential for cardiac risk.”

Fonarow said it is important to understand whether a “more proactive screening and treatment approach” is needed to better address the needs of patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and who may still have weakened heart function. Fonarow said he found McDevitt’s research to be potentially significant because it proves “from a mechanistic standpoint that there can be direct cardiac injury from the virus itself.”

“Even if it were going to impact, say, 2 percent of the people that had COVID-19, when you think of the millions that have been infected, that ends up in absolute terms being a very large number of individuals,” Fonarow said in an interview. “You don’t want people to be unduly alarmed, but on the other hand you don’t want individuals to be complacent about, ‘Oh, the mortality rate is so low with COVID-19, I don’t really care if I’m infected because the chances that it will immediately or in the next few weeks kill me is small enough, I don’t need to be concerned.’ There are other consequences.”

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/post-covid-heart-damage-alarms-researchers-there-was-a-black-hole-in-infected-cells-172015067.html

September 10: 1953 New COVID-19 Cases in Illinois


28 additional fatalities in US.  Boone County has 19 new COVID-19 cases


28


***********************************************************************************************************************************************************


Illinois’ COVID-19 positive test rate down but hospitalizations rising; Pritzker announces funding to connect unemployed residents with training and jobs

By DAN PETRELLA

CHICAGO TRIBUNE |

SEP 10, 2020 AT 4:15 PM

Gov. J.B. Pritzker answers a reporter's question after making a job training announcement at The Workforce Connection on Sept. 10, 2020, in Rockford.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker answers a reporter's question after making a job training announcement at The Workforce Connection on Sept. 10, 2020, in Rockford. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star)

The percentage of positive coronavirus tests appears to be trending downward in Illinois after rising for much of the summer, but state officials remain concerned about stubbornly high positivity rates in certain regions as well as rising hospitalizations.

“We can’t outrun this virus. It hasn’t gone away," Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday during a news conference at the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop. “We can’t pretend that we can fully restore our economic vitality as long as it’s here without any way to temper or prevent it.”



State health officials on Thursday reported 1,953 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number of cases statewide since the pandemic began to 255,643. With 28 more fatalities also reported, the official death toll stands at 8,242.

Statewide, the positivity rate stood at 3.8% on a seven-day average as of Wednesday. The 3.7% seven-day average the previous day marked the first time the positivity rate dipped below 4% in more than a month.



Silent spreaders and long haulers. Aerosols and protocols. 10 things science has learned about COVID-19 in less than a year. »

Still, the share of positive tests remains much higher in two regions that have been placed under tighter restrictions in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.

In Will and Kankakee counties, where tighter restrictions on restaurants, bars and casinos took effect Aug. 26, the rate remains at 7.5%. That’s below the 8% rate that triggered stricter rules, but still above the 6.5% threshold needed for them to be loosened once again.



In the Metro East region near St. Louis, the positivity rate was 10.1%, three weeks after stricter rules were put in place.

While positivity rates are improving in much of the rest of the state, Pritzker said the state is closely monitoring rising hospitalizations.

As of Wednesday night, 1,609 people were reported to be hospitalized in the state with COVID-19, up from 1,481 a month earlier.

COVID-19 in Illinois by the numbers: Here’s a daily update on cases, positivity rate and hospital data in your area »

Reiterating a message she’s been promoting for months, Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike cited medical research suggesting “near universal adoption” of mask wearing and other public health measures such as hand-washing could effectively halt community spread of the virus.

“What more can I tell you? How can we convince you further? Wear a mask," Ezike said. “It’s really that simple.”

Earlier Thursday, Pritzker joined local officials in Rockford to announce a nearly $17 million effort to connect roughly 1,300 people who are unemployed amid the coronavirus pandemic with training and jobs, including temporary jobs assisting with the response to COVID-19.

Two federal grants totaling $16.6 million will be distributed to a dozen local workforce agencies across the state to help train and employ out-of-work residents for jobs such as contact tracing, building sanitation, temperature screening, and food preparation and distribution. Priority will be given to applicants who have lost their jobs during the pandemic.

PPP loans kept many small businesses afloat this summer. Without more funds, experts say a wave of bankruptcies is coming. »

The federal funding “will help us address a goal for reinvigorating our economy that’s twofold: returning more of our residents to the jobs that they know and also simultaneously addressing new economic demand brought on by COVID-19,” Pritzker said.


The federally funded program will reach only a minute portion of unemployed Illinois residents, however.

During the week ending Aug. 29, the most recent for which data is available, more than 26,000 initial unemployment claims were filed with the Illinois Department of Employment Security. As of July, there were nearly 500,000 fewer jobs in Illinois compared with the same period last year.

More information on the jobs announced Thursday is available at illinois.gov/gethired.

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com

Above is from:  https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-coronavirus-illinois-pritzker-20200910-fttdixir2vbbxjojsmvmgjonw4-story.html?int=lat_digitaladshouse_bx-modal_acquisition-subscriber_ngux_display-ad-interstitial_bx-bonus-story_______