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To:
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Chemical Industry Council of Illinois (CICI) Members
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From:
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Mark Biel, Chief Executive Officer
[email protected] or 217/522-5805
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Re:
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update – Unemployment Claims Challenges; Temporary TWIC Exemptions; Update on Cases
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Unemployment Claims Challenges: The unemployment claims process in Illinois has been overwhelmed with the largest number of claimants ever to have filed in such a short time period. In fact, the spike in unemployment has been so severe that the state’s electronic filing system for unemployment crashed as a result of so many claimants filing at once. According to the governor’s office press briefing today, through the five weeks from March 1 to April 4, Illinois received 513,173 unemployment claims, which is greater than the total number of initial claims for the entirety of 2019 (489,831) and five times greater than the claims filed in the first five weeks of the 2008 great recession.
Governor Pritzker commented that the Illinois Department of Employment Security is upgrading its website infrastructure to try and handle the multitude of new filings and is expanding call center capacity. He also announced that eligibility requirements will be eased through emergency rulemaking authority.
Temporary TWIC Exemptions: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has granted a temporary exemption regarding the expiration of TWIC’s by extending the expiration date. For any TWIC expiring between March 1, 2020, and July 31, 2020, the exemption extends the validity of that TWIC for 180 days. This exemption extends to anyone whose TWIC would otherwise expire during the period of April 10, 2020 through July 31, 2020. Attached to this Update are two separate notices from TSA explaining this temporary exemption. TWIC Exemption FAQs.
Update on Cases: The Illinois Dept. of Public Health (IDPH) is now reporting a total of 794 deaths, an increase of 74 deaths since yesterday. There are currently 22,025 positive cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, which is an increase of 1,173 cases since yesterday.In total, 105,768 people have now been tested in Illinois for the virus, which is only an increase of 5,033 from yesterday. Of those people tested, 20.8% of the results are positive for COVID-19. This is an increase of 0.2% from yesterday, which is also the same increase we saw over the weekend.
You can check where these cases are occurring at the State of Illinois COVID-19 website which also contains more information on this outbreak. Also, IDPH has a case breakdown of the number of positive cases in Chicago and each county relative to the number of fatalities. The IDPH website also now includes a breakdown of the cases under each zip code in the state. In addition, Western Illinois University has an put together this Map of COVID-19 Cases in Illinois & Surrounding States which gives you picture of where COVID-19 cases are occurring in relation to areas surrounding Illinois.
Worldometer also has a site with pertinent statistics on a state by state breakdown and comparison. Also, the City of Chicago has a good categorization of the cases within the city.
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