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When the coronavirus first hit Chicago and Cook County last spring, Black residents bore the brunt of the surging death toll.
But over the past year, as Cook County deaths have climbed toward 10,000, the virus has wreaked havoc in nearly every corner of the region. Low-income communities of all ethnicities have been hit especially hard, from the heavily Hispanic neighborhoods around Cicero to majority-white areas like Niles and Oak Lawn.
Early pandemic hot spots like South Shore have been surpassed by communities like Cicero, where two low-rated nursing homes and a profusion of multifamily apartment buildings have led to consistently high death rates, according to interviews with public health experts and government officials and an analysis of Cook County death data and medical records
How Peoria became a vaccine leader • Brazilian variant identified in Illinois • California biotech firm moves to Chicago
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Johnny Milano/Bloomberg
PEORIA LEADS THE STATE IN COVID VACCINATIONS: As of March 4, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, 84 percent of county residents 65 or older had received a first dose, two times the rate for Chicago and Cook County.
On Feb. 24, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that if Peoria County were a state, it would be No. 2 in the nation for total doses administered per 100,000 residents. Surprised? So was Monica Hendrickson, public health administrator at the Peoria City/County Health Department.