CHICAGO – As Illinois seeks to reduce COVID-19 positivity rates as part of Governor Pritzker’s Restore Illinois recovery plan, new research by the UChicago Poverty Lab finds that communities with high shares of residents who are uninsured or of residents who are undocumented are most likely to be in need of expanded testing.
These two characteristics were consistently associated with higher test positivity rates, according to the Poverty Lab’s analysis, which also looked at community-level characteristics including racial composition, household size, density of essential workers and population density. Furthermore, the analysis shows that while overall testing in Illinois has increased, testing in these two communities lags in proportion to test positivity rates, suggesting they face additional barriers to testing and care.
