The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine provides hope that the end of the pandemic is near. But it’s not over yet. And in some parts of the country access
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Citing a lack of access to testing for many vulnerable essential workers, a group of researchers teamed up with a local health clinic to organize pop-up COVID-19 testing events in the central Illinois town of Rantoul.
Despite tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases and hundreds of deaths, agriculture workers struggle to access one of the most basic tools to fight the spread of the coronavirus testing.
For more than a decade, Saraí has been a farmworker, cultivating corn and soybeans in the fields of central Illinois. She moved to the U.S. from Mexico to find work that would allow her to better support her family.
AP
When the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced last summer it planned to bring its entire campus back in the fall by using an unproven test its own researchers developed, it was seen as a big gamble.
But after a semester during which the school saw its positivity rate plunge below 1%, with no major outbreaks, hospitalizations or deaths, the university’s testing protocol has become a model. And despite a spike in cases nationwide, the self-developed test is helping UIUC feel confident there won’t be a huge spike in cases when students start arriving for spring semester this week.
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Illinois Agribusiness goes against the grain and finds success in 2020
By Christopher Heimerman
For the Illinois Press Association
BLOOMINGTON – Apple orchard and pumpkin patch operators can pick out a number of surprise benefits from doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During a Thursday afternoon session at the virtual Illinois Specialty Crop Conference, operators of two of the state’s biggest such companies went over unforeseen boons – from a more productive relationship with government officials to more fruitful use of social media.
The biggest surprise, perhaps? Sales went up year-over-year, according to Chris Eckert, president of Eckert’s Country Store and Farms in Belleville.