CHICAGO (Heart of Illinois ABC) – All Illinois school children and people at long-term care facilities will be required to wear face masks to slow COVID-19’s latest surge caused by the highly-contagious Delta variant.
Masks are mandated for students, teachers, and staff at pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, along with day care centers across the state., Gov. JB Pritzker announced Wednesday.
The measures mirror guidelines recently announced by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has found the delta variant is as contagious as the chicken pox.
“Given our current trajectory in hospitalizations and ICU usage, we have a limited amount of time right now to stave off the highest peaks of this surge going into the fall,” said Pritzker.
State of Illinois partners with Alpine Academy for vaccine clinic
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ROCKFORD (WREX) The Illinois Department of Public Health partnered with Alpine Academy to host a vaccine clinic. The clinic comes just a few weeks before classes begin.
Alpine Academy says it s important to provide the opportunity to get vaccinated not only for students, but the entire community.
Alpine Academy Director, Scott Dabson says they want to ensure both students and families are safe before classes begin. It will allow our students to be back in school full time and not risk missing school of any kind or anything like that, said Dabson. So anything that we can do to make that better and make it better for our students, for our families, and really for our community, we should really be able to get out together and do that.
Thanks to a donation from an anonymous donor, Colee’s Corner Drugs family of pharmacies will be offering gift cards as an incentive to those who get fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
âItâs just so tentative,â Heck said.
Heck made the comments while attending a gathering of area school leaders with Regional Office of Education 11 at Lake Charleston.Â
Most Macon County school districts, except for Decatur, had not yet made firm decisions about masks prior to Pritzker s mandate, citing the fact that advice from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control has changed rapidly in recent days.
Several had board meetings scheduled in the next few days to discuss the issue prior to schools opening, which for most districts is the week of Aug. 16. We are excited to have the chance to be back in our classrooms with our kids, said Chrissy Petitt, president of the Decatur Education Association. While we all hope to put this pandemic behind us sooner rather than later, we respect the need to do all we can to look out for the health and safety of our community.
Mattoon, IL, USA / MyRadioLink.com
For Immediate Release – August 4, 2021
Illinois Department of Public Health Expands Free COVID-19 Testing to All K-12 Public Schools in Illinois
SPRINGFIELD – To help ensure schools can more safely resume in-person learning, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced it is expanding access to free COVID-19 testing to all K-12 public schools across Illinois outside of Chicago which received its own federal funding. Schools can choose to utilize the SHIELD Illinois saliva-based test developed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), which is able to detect SARS-CoV-2 and its variants in symptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and asymptomatic individuals.