News Room

After shelves were emptied of goods like toilet paper, canned food and hand sanitizer at the start of the pandemic, Chicago-area grocery stores and suppliers are stocking up to avert shortages as coronavirus cases rise in Illinois. On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a 10 p.m. curfew on all nonessential city businesses and a prohibition on indoor service at bars without food licenses. Gov. J.B. Pritzker also announced stricter rules for some counties, including DuPage, Kane, Will and Kankakee.

Nevada’s rate of coronavirus infections is steadily rising again. But state officials are reluctant to blame relaxed guidelines and say there is no reason yet to consider stricter measures. “We’re not at that point now,” Gov. Steve Sisolak said Tuesday. “I don’t want to get to that point ... I don’t want to see that happen, so we are working to loosen things up more and get people back to what their new normal is,” he said at a news conference in Las Vegas. 

Allan Lichtman, the distinguished political scientist from American University, has demonstrated an uncanny knack to forecast who will win U.S. presidential elections. Using an earthquake forecasting model adapted to election forecasting, he uses 13 simple true/false questions, labelled the “Keys to the White House,” with six or more false keys indicating that the challenger will defeat the incumbent.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as voluntary shelter-in-place, quarantines, and other steps taken to control the SARS-CoV-2 virus can reduce the peak number of infections, daily infection rates, cumulative infections, and overall deaths, a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE has found.

Recent guidance from Operation Warp Speed and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided details to state and local health departments who will be delivering and administering the COVID-19 vaccines. They are being asked to complete a Herculean task without enough resources. Engaging effectively in public-private partnerships could be helpful in achieving the goal while leading to long-term innovation for public health.