Looking Back After A Year: Chicago is Recovering, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is in Vaccination Phase 1B .

It has been a year since the pandemic flipped everyone’s lives upside down. Many were laid-off due to the pandemic as Chicago entered the lockdown state.

Now, Chicago is slowly resuming to its original state with the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. The city of Chicago adopts a 4-phase plan from the to introduce the vaccine to the public. The phases are:

Phase 1A: began on December 15, 2020. The phase focuses on long-term care and other residential healthcare facilities and healthcare workers.

Phase 1B: began on January 15, 2021. The phase focuses on elder people with 65 years or older, front-line workers, and non-healthcare residential workers, such as homeless shelters and correctional settings. On February 12, 2021, governor Pritzker expanded the eligibility to people with underlying conditions.

Phase 1C: is estimated to begin on March 29, 2021. The phase will focus on other essential worker, such as wastewater, food service, shelter, and housing, etc.

Phase 2: is estimated to begin May 31, 2021. This phase is open for all Chicagoans age 16 or older.

Chicago’s deaths by race do not have much of a difference. 28.87% of the cases were Latinx, 28.3% of the cases were white, and 37.2% were black. This is almost a 10% difference.

For UIC, the phases are the same, but tailored differently to better accommodate their community.

Since 8/17/2020, UIC has had a total of 1,676 positive cases on campus. Since February 8, 2020, the university has made it mandatory for anyone who come to campus to have a bi-weekly saliva test and do a health check survey.

see the interactive infographic here.

Sources:

COVID-19 Deaths in Chicago’s Neighborhoods (southsideweekly.com)

Vaccine Distribution Phases (chicago.gov)

COVID-19 Vaccine Information & Resources | UI Health | University of Illinois at Chicago (uic.edu)

City of Chicago

Medical Examiner Case Archive | Cook County Open Data (cookcountyil.gov)

UIC COVID-19 Tracking | COVID-19 Dashboard | University of Illinois at Chicago