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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 – Worker’s Compensation Emergency Rule; CICI informs Illinois General Assembly on Important Work of the State’s Chemical Industry: Update on COVID-19 Cases; COVID-19 Recovery Rate; and CICI COVID-19 Webpage
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Worker’s Compensation Emergency Rule: CICI mentioned this worker's comp emergency rule change in today’s Legisletter. This emergency rule creates an “automatic presumption” that any essential worker diagnosed with COVID-19 contracted the illness while at the workplace, even if the employee was working remotely or currently not on the job.
The Illinois Workers Compensation Commission will conduct an emergency meeting by phone tomorrow, Wednesday April 15, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. The call-in number for the meeting is 888-494-4032, passcode is 8061403017 and will only cover the emergency rule.
As stated in this morning Legisletter, CICI is deeply disappointed in the actions of the Worker’s Compensation Commission. This rule was adopted with little notice and no hearings, potentially violating the Illinois Open Meetings Act. There was also no known legislative consideration. Lastly, throughout the last month and a half, the Governor has been providing daily press briefings on every aspect of the COVID-19 outbreak but not once mentioned the WC issue, let alone in terms of WC being an emergency.
CICI informs Illinois General Assembly on Important Work of the state’s Chemical Industry: Attached to this Update is a memo which was sent to all members of the Illinois General Assembly today illustrating the chemical industry’s work in providing the vital equipment and products necessary in battling this pandemic, while also taking extraordinary measures to protect the health and safety of employees, maintaining safe operations of facilities, and complying with all state and federal environmental regulations.
Update on COVID-19 Cases: The Illinois Dept. of Public Health (IDPH) is now reporting a total of 868 deaths, an increase of 74 deaths since yesterday, which is the same rate of increase as yesterday. There are currently 23,247 positive cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, which is an increase of 1,222 since yesterday.In total, 110,616 people have now been tested in Illinois for the virus, which is an increase of 4,848 as of yesterday. Of those people tested, 21% of the results are positive for COVID-19. This is an increase of 0.2% from yesterday, which is also the same increase we have been seeing the last few days.
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.
COVID-19 Recovery Rate: At Governor Pritzker’s daily press briefing, IDPH presented some updated data on the state’s recovery rate from those who have previously tested positive and responded to the IDPH survey. The figures are broken down by how many days have lapsed since positive test. As you can see, as more time goes by, the recovery rate becomes much better. In their responses, IDPH found that after:
7 days – 44% recovered
14 days – 50% recovered
21 days – 61% recovered
28 days – 69% recovered
It was remarked during this press conference, that, at least globally, 80% of people who test positive recover and don’t require hospitalization or a significant medical intervention. About 19% require some hospitalization or medical intervention. And then, regrettably, 0.7- 1% of these cases have been fatal.
CICI COVID-19 Webpage: CICI has updated it’s website to include a webpage devoted to all of the COVID-19 Updates sent out to the membership as well as all of the informational and guidance documents from both government and business resources and can be accessed at CICI COVID-19. In addition, the search engine at www.cicil.net is another good resource for finding information on this outbreak and other CICI publications and activities.
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