Illinoisans can look online for pretty much anything they want to know about coronavirus — hospitalization numbers, where to get tested or case counts in their region.
What's not clear is how well the state is doing at informing people who have been exposed to coronavirus, also known as contact tracing.
The recovery rate from the virus is 95 percent; at the end of Sunday, there were 1,417 COVID-19-positive patients in hospital beds statewide.
"They're keeping track of all the other metrics, but I see nothing at all on contact tracing," said Abigail Silva, a public health professor at Loyola University in Chicago who led an effort to help local health officials with COVID-19 tracing.
Health experts say contact tracing is essential to slowing the virus' spread and to ascertaining when it's safe to reopen portions of the economy or shut them down.
Yet few details on Illinois' efforts are readily available to the public. The Illinois Department of Public Health did not respond to a request for information about contact tracing metrics.
One benchmark that would answer questions about the state's goals is unavailable. That's whether Illinois health professionals have reached out to 90% of cases within 24 hours of a positive test result. It was one of the requirements for Illinois to move from Phase 3 to Phase 4 of its five-phase reopening plan. It's not clear if the state has reached that goal.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has repeatedly defended the state's work, which includes an $80 million contact tracing effort announced in May and pilot programs in St. Clair and Lake counties.
"I look at the numbers once a week and how we're doing in contacting the numbers that we need," Pritzker said at a news conference in Collinsville last week. "We're doing quite well in that we have 1,600 contact tracers across the state, and we're going to build that up to 3,000 in the end."
But tracers hoping to help are still waiting for a phone call from the state.
After learning about the need, community colleges and universities statewide started to train hundreds of people who hoped to become tracers. Experts such as Silva leveraged their resources to make ready. But she said her group, the Contact Tracing Corps, is still waiting to hear from the state after submitting an interest form more than a month ago.
"We've been waiting. People want to do it and they're interested," Silva said.
Pritzker's response
Pritzker said a claim that Illinois had dropped the ball on contact tracing was an "inaccurate portrayal." State Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, said the state hasn't met its promises to dramatically increase efforts statewide, Chicago PBS station WTTW reported in June.
"We got on this very early," the governor said, "starting with the fact that we already had contact tracers in the state when the pandemic broke out. ... So, we had across the state hundreds of people doing contact tracing. What we needed to do was make this thousands, not hundreds. So, we did that."
While Pritzker defended the state's efforts, his office announced last week it's looking for help from outside organizations and a contractor.
Boston-based medical charity Partners in Health will provide technical assistance and advice to Illinois. The organization earned praise for its work in Massachusetts, which provides daily data on tracing capabilities.
As Gov. J.B. Pritzker appeared with officials in two downstate counties that have seen coronavirus outbreaks, Illinois on Monday reported 1,23…
Then the governor's office announced health officials are seeking help from community organizations. In the next few weeks, $50 million will go to 57 local health departments. They will use it to partner with local groups that can better "reach people who may be at higher risk of infection, but hesitant to talk with health officials," said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
This is the type of work Silva, the Loyola professor, has already done. Her group developed a free course available online to provide soft skills and cultural competency to contact tracers. She hopes the grants will empower organizations such as hers to help strained public health departments.
"We very much know contact tracing is our bread and butter, but we can't do it ourselves," Silva said.
Transparency and testing
The Illinois Department of Public Health is finalizing funding for the other 40 local health agencies statewide, according to a statement from the governor's office. All said, the state will have distributed $215 million in local grants since the pandemic began.
But it's not clear what effect the millions have had on contact tracing efforts.
Partners in Health could help Illinois reach levels seen in Massachusetts. The charity helped ramp up the state's tracing collaborative, which has reached roughly 86% of the nearly 27,000 confirmed cases and 21,000 of their contacts in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts also includes a status for contact tracing on its daily update, telling residents whether their efforts are increasing, holding steady or decreasing.
Kellie Steele, a medical student helping with Loyola's contact tracing collaborative, hopes the state will follow the lead of states like Massachusetts in its transparency about contact tracing. But Illinois isn't the only state failing to provide that information, she added.
"It's a really common theme," Steele said. "So many states are slow, states aren't sharing the data, or just trying to find how many contact tracers states and counties have hired is nearly impossible."
While contact tracing can help contain outbreaks such as the one that started earlier this month in the metro-east, it becomes less effective when test results take more than a week to come back.
"Reaching those cases within 24 hours is really critical, otherwise we miss an opportunity to ask them to quarantine and then (reach) their contacts before they get sick and start spreading," Silva said.
The 24 most unusual town names in Illinois
Unusual town names in Illinois

We've got nothing but love for odd town names, because we are the home of Normal, after all. Some of these names are silly, others are simple, and all of them have pun potential.
Goofy Ridge

Let's start with the town that actually has humor in its name. According to Wikipedia, the area was originally called "The Ridge," a camp near the river bank. After some serious drinking one night, a local game warden said he wasn’t too drunk to shoot a walnut off the head of a volunteer. Naturally, someone was drunk enough to volunteer. The game warden placed the tiny target on the volunteer’s head, aimed his .22 rifle, and shot the nut right off. This caper was called by a witness “one damned goofy thing to do,” and the camp was ever after known as Goofy Ridge. (Wikipedia)
Normal

Normal was laid out with the name North Bloomington on June 7, 1854 by Joseph Parkinson. The town was renamed to Normal in February 1865 and officially incorporated on February 25, 1867. The name was taken from Illinois State Normal University—called a "normal school," as it was a teacher-training institution. It has since been renamed Illinois State University after becoming a general four-year university. (Wikipedia)
Birds

Birds is an unincorporated community in Lawrence County. According to Wikipedia, a Birds resident named Bob Rose became the "most distinguished Reggie Redbird mascot at Illinois State University in 1978." Rose is quoted as saying, "As a boy growing up in Birds, I always dreamed of being the most famous of all Illinois birds, the Redbird. I remember feeling very homesick when I arrived at Illinois State. But, the first time I became Reggie, I felt I could take my Birds nest anywhere and feel at home. I thank Birds for inspiring me to take on the challenge of being Reggie and for allowing me to spread my wings and fly." (Wikipedia)
Oblong

Oblong is a village in Crawford County. Incorporated in 1883, the village was originally a crossroads; when the village decided to incorporate, it was named after a rectangular prairie on the outskirts of the community. (Wikipedia)
Beardstown

Beardstown is a city in Cass County. The population was 6,123 at the 2010 census.
Beardstown was first settled by Thomas Beard in 1819; he erected a log cabin at the edge of the Illinois River, from which he traded with the local Native Americans and ran a ferry. The town was laid out in 1827 and was incorporated as a city in 1896.
The town is also the site of famous Lincoln/Douglas debate at the Beardstown Courthouse. A Lincoln Museum is on the second floor of the courthouse along with many Native American relics. (Wikipedia)
Muddy

Muddy is a small incorporated village located in the Harrisburg Township in Saline County. It was built as a coal mining village to house miners working in O'gara #12 mine located on the north bank of the Saline River. Until 2002, it held the smallest post office in the United States. (Wikipedia)
Sandwich

Sandwich is a city in DeKalb, Kendall, and LaSalle counties. Politician "Long John" Wentworth named it after his home of Sandwich, New Hampshire.
Sandwich is the home of the Sandwich Fair, which first started as an annual livestock show in DeKalb County. Held yearly, the Wednesday–Sunday after Labor Day since 1888, it is one of the oldest continuing county fairs in the state of Illinois, drawing daily crowds of more than 100,000, with the top attendance days reaching more than 200,000 fair-goers. (Wikipedia)
Other Illinois towns with unique nouns for names: Bath, Diamond, Energy, Equality, Flora, Justice, Liberty, Magnolia, and Pearl.
Ransom

Ransom is a village in LaSalle County. It was a planned community; ads were placed in the Streator Monitor as early as 1876 calling for shopkeepers, craftsmen, and tradesmen to locate and set up shop in the area. In 1885, the village of Ransom was officially incorporated. The village was named for American Civil War General Thomas E.G. Ransom, who was born in Vermont but lived as a young man in Illinois. (Wikipedia)
Standard

Standard is a village in Putnam County. The population was 220 at the 2010 census.
Normal is another Illinois town with a rather average name.
Cairo

Cairo is the southernmost city in Illinois. Generally pronounced care-o by natives and kay-ro by others, it's located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers—this part of Illinois is known as Little Egypt. (Wikipedia)
Other Illinois towns with international names include Athens, Belgium, Canton, Columbia, Crete, Havana, Palestine, Panama, Paris, Peru, Rome, and Venice.
And there are plenty of other U.S. towns named Cairo—they're located in Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and West Virginia.
Wyoming

Wyoming is a city in Stark County. It was founded on May 3, 1836 by General Samuel Thomas, a veteran of the War of 1812. He and many of the other early settlers came from the state of Pennsylvania. It is for the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania that the city is named. (Wikipedia)
Other Illinois towns that share names with U.S. states include Kansas, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Virginia.
Golf

Golf is a village in Cook County. The community is primarily residential, and has a dedicated police department, post office, and Metra train stop; it has a total area of 0.45 square miles. (Wikipedia)
Aside from Golf, there is also a town named Polo in Illinois—that makes two towns that share names with sports. Golf and Polo are also Volkswagen vehicle models. Two other Illinois towns that share names with auto makers are Plymouth and Pontiac.
Boody

Boody is an unincorporated census-designated place in Macon County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 276.
Mechanicsburg

Mechanicsburg is a village in Sangamon County. The population was 456 at the 2000 census. (Wikipedia)
There are a few other Illinois towns that share their names with occupations, including Farmer City, Mason City, Piper City, Prophetstown, and Carpentersville.
Hometown

Hometown is a city in Cook County. It was developed after World War II, targeting former GIs and their families. It borders the city of Chicago along 87th Street between Cicero Avenue and Pulaski Road.
Time

Time is a village in Pike County. The population was 29 at the 2000 census.
Royal

Royal is a village in Champaign County. The population was 293 at the 2010 census.
Benld

Benld is a city in Macoupin County. Founded in 1903, the name derives from founder Benjamin L. Dorsey. Dorsey was responsible for gaining the land on which the town was built and coal mining rights. When it came time to name the village, he took the combination of his first name and his middle and last initial.
On September 29, 1938, a meteorite landed in Benld, marking only the third meteorite landing in Illinois since records were kept. The meteorite was also one of the few known meteorites to strike a man-made object, punching a hole in the roof of a man's garage and embedding itself in the seat of his 1928 Pontiac Coupe. A neighbor was standing about 50 feet from the impact and may be the individual who came closest to being struck by a meteorite in history up to that time. The meteorite and portions of the car are now on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. (Wikipedia)
Bone Gap

Bone Gap is a village in Edwards County. French trappers knew this area before it was permanently settled. They referred to it as "Bon Pas," which translates to "good step." Kentuckians modified the name to "Bone Pass," as though it were a "pass" through a mountain range. This was then changed to "Bone Gap."
An alternative story about the origin of Bone Gap's name involves a small band of Piankashaw Indians who established a village in a gap in the trees a short distance east of present day Bone Gap. Several years later early American settlers found a pile of bones discarded by the Indians near their encampment-hence the name Bone Gap as given to the white man's village established about the 1830s. (Wikipedia)
Equality

Equality is a village in Gallatin County. The population was 721 at the 2000 census.
Industry

Industry is a village in McDonough County. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 540.
Joy

Joy is a village in Mercer County. The population was 373 at the 2000 census.
Mineral

Mineral is a village in Bureau County. The population was 237 at the 2010 census, down from 272 people in 2000.
The area in which Mineral is located was first settled in the early 1830s. The land just south of the current village was found to be ripe with coal, hence the town's name. (Wikipedia)
Lost Nation

Lost Nation is an unincorporated census-designated place in Ogle County. It's located south of the city of Oregon. As of the 2010 census, its population was 708.
There is another Lost Nation located in Iowa, 95 miles due west.