Kelly Bauer

Similarly, Chicago's rule that people must wear masks when indoors in public will go away once the city is lower risk, Dr. Allison Arwady said last week.

The company, which has been paid more than $124 million from the federal government and oversees a chain of COVID-19 testing pop-ups, is facing a slew of state and federal investigations.

The county is seeing the most victims since November 2020, before vaccines were available.

Former employees, customers and government inspectors have said the chain had a number of issues — including that it kept tests in unrefrigerated garbage bags and lied to customers about results.

The health commissioner said she expects the city's and state's mask mandates will be removed at some point — but that isn't imminent since the Omicron surge is still so bad.

Ex-workers of the embattled testing chain also said the company used a U-Haul to avoid inspectors. "I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, these tests are positive.'"

People should not drop their guard, as average cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain high, officials said.

The lawsuit alleges the locally based testing chain faked test results, sent inaccurate results or never sent people results in some cases. The suit comes after Block Club revealed the chain's widespread issues.

The federal government has promised to provide 500 million at-home, rapid COVID-19 tests to Americans.

As Omicron cases surged, Chicagoans were told by officials to get tested for COVID-19. With few government-run testing sites, they turned to questionable for-profit pop-ups they don't trust.

Tuesday will be relatively warm — but the rest of the week will see temperatures drop.

The tests might not arrive until some places have already hit their latest COVID-19 peak and are seeing a fall in cases — and, with that, testing demand.

The Center for COVID Control's lab wasted 40,000 tests, according to a federal report. And again and again, people have reported getting late results, no results — or ones that don't make sense.

The ongoing strain on hospital systems stems primarily from unvaccinated Illinoisans, which is reducing capacity for any type of emergency care, state leaders say.

The announcement came Wednesday — the same day thousands of Chicago Public Schools students headed back to class after the district reached a deal with its teachers union for in-person learning.

Lightfoot said she credits her vaccine and booster shot with protecting her health after testing positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday morning.

After a Block Club report, Gov. JB Pritzker described the unregulated pop-ups as an “enormous problem.”

Chicago has now seen slight dips in its positivity rate and in its average number of confirmed cases per day — but those numbers remain high.

Moderately to severely immunocompromised people can get another shot if it's been at least five months since their last one.

More snow and chilly temperatures are coming this weekend, though.