UpdatedThu, Dec 31, 2020 at 2:27 pm CT Reply Have you lost someone to COVID-19? Tell Patch their story. (Shutterstock) ILLINOIS— The United States recently surpassed yet another devastating milestone. To date, more than 344,000 Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. In Illinois, the state marked its own grim milestone before the end of 2020, surpassing 16,000 Illinoisans dead from the virus. It's an impossible number. It's also impossible to convey the full extent of the losses using only numbers. Every death meant more than a statistic. A child lost his mother; a mother lost her child and maybe her own mother, too. A community lost a teacher, a mentor, a student, a coach. The front line lost a nurse, a doctor, an EMT, a hospital orderly.