COVID Updates

There's always news and information about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic coming out every day. It has been a challenge both to keep up with it all and picking a time to highlight that information here. This post provides a recent news roundup and informational links.

As school sports programs are ramping up, there's an increased need to look out for the long term effects and damage COVID may have caused to those children who have had it, even if asymptomatic. From the News-Gazette today:

As school sports have been ramping back up, a local doctor is advising kids who have had COVID-19 recently to get a medical checkup before they return to play.

And by recently, that means having COVID-19 within six weeks of any planned return to sports, according to Dr. Jerrad Zimmerman, a sports-medicine doctor at Carle.

Some kids who had COVID-19 less recently — even many months ago — may also need to be checked out before a return to sports if they have some lingering symptoms, among them fatigue or breathing issues, that may signal a heart risk, he said.

Full article here.

The Daily Illini had an overview of the precautions suggested for the variants now circulating in Illinois and locally contrasted with current local policy:

Many researchers have suggested to double mask and avoid in-person eating, while the county has opened up in-person dining, including limited space at dining halls. The B117 variant, the variant that resulted in the UK’s third lockdown, stands as a threat to the safety of students. 

“There is definitely a disconnect between researchers’ concerns about more infectious variants and public policy, not just in the county but in the nation as a whole,” said Nigel Goldenfeld, professor in Grainger. “The criteria for relaxing tiered mitigation levels are heavily based on hospital occupancy and downward case trends and were developed at a time when there was no awareness of rapidly emerging more transmissible and deadly variants such as B117.”

That full article here.

There are some volunteer opportunities that have been in the news related to the pandemic:

• The CRIS Healthy-Aging Center is looking for volunteers to help with vaccine outreach. Details from WICS here. 
• The Hope Center offers groceries to those in need (more information from WCIA here). To get involved with the Silver Hearts they have volunteer information here. The University has information on its Food Assistance and Well-Being program here.
• Carle Friends program to help people in isolation stay socially connected. Details and links from WAND here.

Other recent local news updates related to COVID:

• The Champaign County Courthouse is going to be welcoming back jurors and jury trials according to News-Gazette coverage today.
• This month saw the expansion of vaccine access in smaller towns and rural areas in Champaign County according to WICS earlier this month.
• Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker toured local facilities here earlier this month. Coverage from Illinois Newsroom here.
• The VA in Danville has been doing outreach to eligible veterans for the vaccine according to WAND.
• CU at Home and public health have been working together to ensure access to the vaccine by homeless members of the community. More that from WCIA here.
• Outreach to local immigrant communities and the New American Center at the campus YMCA was covered by WICS here.

General Updates:

The latest Champaign County COVID data is available from the C-UPHD website here.

The latest updates on vaccinations is available from their website here. The News-Gazettes data updates on vaccination included a helpful chart on 1st and 2nd doses locally by Ben Zigterman:

Full article and more data here.

There are also regular updates with the C-UPHD Administrator Julie Pryde on Urbana Public Television (UPTV6 YouTube Channel here). The most recent interview with Elizabeth Hess is available here from February 22nd.

The Daily Illini also had a recent overview of local contact tracing for anyone interested in how that system works here.

WCIA had an overview of all of the extra work and overtime that has had to be put in at the C-UPHD here.