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CHICAGO (CBS) — Two years ago today, Illinois reported its first case of COVID-19; the patient was a woman in her 60s who had recently returned from Wuhan, China, where the virus was first reported.
The case was only the second confirmed instance of COVID-19 in the United States at the time. Since then, 70.2 million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID (the real number is higher because most positive rapid tests are not reported.) More the 862,000 have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Both numbers are by far the highest in the world.
In Illinois, 2.7 million people have contracted COVID-19 and about 33,600 have died, according to state health department data.
The first Illinois COVID patient, had traveled back from China to Chicago on Jan. 13 but she wasn’t showing symptoms then, CBS 2’s Marissa Parra reported at the time. A week and a half later, she was put in quarantine. She had shortness of breath and a fever when she arrived at the St. Alexius Hospital emergency room in Hoffman Estates and was quickly placed in isolation, officials said. Her condition was described by doctors then as good.
The CDC said she did not take public transit while in Chicago and that she barely left her home. It was three to four days after being home that the woman started feeling symptoms and called her doctor. She was taken to a hospital and was immediately tested and quarantined.
Her husband became infected a few days later, making his case the first documented human-to-human transmission in the United States.
Both recovered from the illness.
Six weeks later, the United States was in a lockdown, as health care workers scrambled desperately to control the virus. Personal protective equipment, like masks and gowns were in short supply. Items like hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes and even toilet paper were hard to find. Only essential businesses were allowed to remain open. Workers scrambled to set up remote offices. Schools were closed, forcing students into remote learning for the remainder of the school year.
Unemployment exploded as businesses, especially restaurants, were forced to lay off workers.
“As this epidemic has progressed, we have had to make some hard decisions,” Gov. JB Pritzker said at the time. “To avoid the loss of potentially tens of thousands of lives, we must enact an immediate stay at home order for the state of Illinois.”
Now in the third year of a global pandemic, the latest wave of COVID-19–the Omicron variant–sent infections soaring once again this month. But vaccines helped keep many from developing severe symptoms, health experts said. However, the variant still hit the unvaccinated population hard and hospitalizations and deaths rose once again. In the Midwest, the worst of the Omicron surge has passed.
Source: ChicagoCBS
