BREAKING NEWS: Starting TODAY, Illinois teachers and school employees will be required to get a covid-19 vaccination or submit to weekly testing for covid-19 in order to continue working in the schools. The following e-mail was sent out to Rock Island School District 41 employees today. Variations of the same e-mail have been sent out to other school district employees across the state. Starting Monday, September 20, 2021 all RIMSD employees must be vaccinated OR get a COVID- 19 test each week. Fully vaccinated employees must submit proof by sending a copy of their vaccination card to the District... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Southern Illinois regions have run out of available ICU beds, a dangerous metric that could trigger new, harsher covid-19 mandates from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Southern Illinois reported Monday that it had no available ICU beds in an area of almost a half-million people, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. That marked the first time since the covid pandemic began that an Illinois region had reported no available ICU beds. Illinois Medical Professionals Action Collaborative Team, known by its acronym IMPACT, released a statement Tuesday, describing it as “signaling... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Vaccines could be available to schoolchildren ages 5-11 throughout Illinois as soon as later this year, according to reports out of Frankfurt, Germany. The company behind the vaccines, BioNTech will be requesting approval for its covid-19 vaccine use in kids 5-11 across the globe over the next few weeks and preparations for a launch are on track, the biotech firm’s two top executives told German newspaper Der Spiegel. “Already over the next few weeks we will file the results of our trial in five to 11 year olds with regulators across the world and will request approval... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: As covid numbers continue to spike higher, and officials dread numbers after the bustling Labor Day weekend celebrations, Illinois Gov. JB Pritkzer has warned the state could be hit with “significantly greater mitigations” if the state’s covid metrics continue to slide downward. New covid-19 cases statewide jumped 18.3 percent over the past week, with nearly 6,000 reported today so far alone, according to statistics from Covid-19 Illinois. Nearly every county is now at a ‘warning level’ for Covid-19, and the entirety of Southern Illinois has only one ICU bed... Read More

BREAKING NEWS (UPDATED): Iowa has been slammed with a civil rights investigation by the Biden administration’s Education Department over Gov. Kim Reynolds’ move to ban mask mandates. The federal government investigation levels the charge that Iowa, and Gov. Reynolds’ actions, “create an unsafe learning environment for students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from covid-19.” Iowa is one of five states to get hit with the investigations, the other four being Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. “We’re advocating for... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said today “greater mitigations” are coming if covid-19 numbers continue to spike massively in the state. Illinois Department of Public Health officials reported 4,451 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and 40 related deaths Wednesday, that news following the state hitting its highest one-day total in covid cases since late January and its highest week for infections in months last week. “If we are not able to bring these numbers down, if hospitals continue to fill, if the hospital beds and ICUs get full like they are in Kentucky... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: The latest surge of covid-19 delta variant infections has roared through Illinois, pushing the state to its highest one-day total in covid cases since late January and its highest week for infections in months. This comes the same day that new indoor mask mandates go into effect throughout the entirety of Cook County, requiring everyone over the age of two to be masked in indoor public spaces, regardless of whether they’re vaccinated. Businesses also must post signs on all entrances telling customers about the rule. Given that the new, wider mask mandates into Cook County come... Read More