COVID-19 Data

Tracking and publishing COVID-19 cases in a district with over 330,000 students, over 40,000 permanent staff, and over 500 district-run schools can be extremely complex. As the pandemic has evolved, our dashboard has evolved and expanded to include more data. So before you dive into the numbers, please take a moment to read about how we currently collect and report the information in our dashboard. Please keep in mind that numbers are dynamic and subject to change.

The total cases data on this page shows all cases among CPS students and staff. Cases are displayed at both the District level and the individual school level; counts can be viewed by day or by week. Keep in mind that case counts are not a measure of transmission in schools and numerous studies have shown that schools are not sites of significant COVID-19 transmission.

CPS is notified of cases in two key ways:

Weekly Screening Testing: Every week, CPS offers free COVID-19 testing in every school. When a positive case is detected, CPS is notified, and the case is posted on the dashboard on the day the result is received. Sign your student up for weekly testing
Self-Reported Cases: When a student or staff member submits a positive test through our self-reporting tool, the case gets posted on our dashboard that same day. These case counts are subject to change as cases are investigated and verified. Report a positive COVID-19 case

Why does CPS treat these cases differently? Results that come in through our weekly screening program are more timely and accurate than self-reported cases. Self-reported cases take time to investigate and verify; many self-reported cases turn out to be duplicates or unconfirmed reports. In the interest of transparency, we are providing both totals.

For more information on our reporting and terminology, view the footnotes below.

The individuals in quarantine/isolation data on this page shows the number of students and staff who are either teaching or learning from home because they have either tested positive for COVID-19 or have been identified as a close contact of someone who has tested positive. Totals are displayed at both the District level and the individual school level.

For more information on our reporting and terminology, view the footnotes below.

This section reports information about student vaccination rates at both the district and school levels. Use the “School” tab to search for your school and view detailed information about student vaccination. Results are broken out by school governance, age group, and vaccination status.

For more information on our reporting and terminology, view the footnotes below.

Daily District Cases

Quarantined/Isolated Individuals

Eligible Student Vaccination Rates

Students Opted In To Testing

Adults Self-Reported Positive: Adult cases reported to the district through the CPS contact tracing self report form, regardless of investigation status. This will include cases where an investigation has not yet started, is in progress, or closed. Because cases still under investigation may not be confirmed, case counts are dynamic and subject to change.
Adults Screen-Tested Positive: The total number of positive adult tests resulted through the District’s on-site COVID-19 screening program. This metric does not include positive self-reported cases. Adults exclude students who are 18 years or older.
Students Self-Reported Positive: Student cases reported to the district through the CPS contact tracing self report form, regardless of investigation status. This will include cases where an investigation has not yet started, or is in progress, or closed. Because cases still under investigation may not be confirmed, case counts are dynamic and subject to change.
Students Screen-Tested Positive: The total number of positive student tests resulted through the District’s on-site COVID-19 screening program. This metric is validated to ensure it’s matched against a student and does not include positive self-reported cases. Students include those individuals who are 18 years or older.
Quarantined/Isolated: Quarantined/Isolated numbers include those individuals that are quarantined as well as those in isolation and are subject to change based on the investigation of open cases. Counts of Quarantined/Isolated individuals reflect daily totals for the specified day, counted at the indicated time. Individuals may be included in daily totals for multiple days. Dates displaying “N/A” for Quarantined/Isolated data represent legacy data that is not reflective of the district’s updated COVID-19 dashboard logic. The updated dashboard now has Quarantined/Isolated data to report for dates after September 27, 2021. All individuals identified as close contacts are instructed to quarantine for 10 calendar days as required by the district and the Chicago Department of Public Health, except those who are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic. Individuals who are quarantined are excluded from CPS property. The movement of these individuals is restricted to minimize the spread of COVID-19.
7 Day Average: The 7 Day Average on the chart above shows a moving average of adults and students in quarantine/isolation over a seven-day window, aggregated on the last day. The 7 Day Average is calculated as a Simple Moving Average and is intended to give a clear view of trends.
Actionable Cases: CPS only reports Actionable Cases on our dashboards. Actionable Cases represent cases where an individual either tested positive while inside a district building or tested positive while outside a district building but entered a building while infectious. Non-Actionable Cases are cases where an individual tested positive while outside a district building and did not enter a district building while infectious.
Close Contact: Defined by the CDC as being within 6 feet of a person with COVID-19 for 15 or more minutes within a 24-hour period during the individual’s contagious period, with or without a mask. In the classroom, close contact between students is defined as being within 3 feet for 15 or more minutes within a 24-hour period during the positive student’s contagious period, with or without a mask.
Correction to Quarantined/Isolated Students: An error identified in the district’s contact tracing system resulted in an undercount of quarantined/isolated students between February 18, 2022 and February 23, 2022. The issue has been corrected and the proper count is now reflected in the data on this page. This correction caused the reported number of quarantined/isolated students to increase when the data was updated on February 24, 2022, due to the addition of students who were not previously counted during the 5-day period. Please note, impacted students and their families were notified of the positive test or the exposure; the error only applied to the data dashboard.
Vaccination Rates: Vaccination rates are broken out by school governance, vaccination status, and FDA/CDC eligibility group based on age. At this time, students younger than age 5 are not considered eligible for COVID-19 vaccination by health officials. The District Completed Vaccination Course numbers at the top of the dashboard represent the percentage and total number (in parentheses) of students across all age groups who have completed a vaccination series out of the total number of eligible students currently enrolled at district-operated schools. The Non-District Completed Vaccination Course numbers at the top of the dashboard represent the percentage and total number (in parentheses) of vaccinated students across all age groups who have completed a vaccination series out of the number of eligible students enrolled in non-district-operated schools that have reported vaccination data to CPS.
School Governance: District schools are those operated by CPS and staffed by CPS employees. Non-district schools are those operated under charter, contract, ALOP or SAFE governance.
Vaccination Status: CPS follows guidance provided by public health officials to define student vaccination status and align its reporting with the City of Chicago. In the data above, vaccination status is broken out by At Least One Dose and Completed Course. At Least One Dose refers to the number of students who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine based on self-reported records. Completed Course refers to the number of students who have completed a two-dose series (ages 5 to 17), or either a one dose or a two dose series (ages 18+) based on self-reported records and available public health records. These numbers represent only students whose vaccination status has been reported to the district.
Students Opted In To Testing: The percentage and total number of students participating in the in-school COVID-19 screening testing program at district-operated schools and facilities. Data is available at the district level.
Please note that last year the district had a number of pod impacts. As our students have returned to five days a week of in-person education, pod data are no longer available.

Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing

Screen Tested: CPS conducts onsite COVID-19 staff and student screening testing across the District. The data in the table above reflects only the results of the on-site tests. This data does not reflect any self-reported COVID-19 test results submitted by staff, students, or family members. Case counts are subject to change.
Tests Completed: The total number of test results that have been processed through the CPS COVID-19 screening program for the range of dates above. Each sample reported in the count is first collected in the field, then processed and analyzed by the lab, and finally, reported to the District. Results are expected to be reported within 72 hours of collection but additional time may be required to process some tests. Therefore, case counts are subject to change.
Tested Positive: The total number COVID-19 screening program tests that returned a confirmed positive result. The number of positive cases does not include self-reported cases and is validated to confirm it’s matched with a current student/staff record. Confirmed positive cases are also reflected in the Total Cases data above based on when the positive case is reported to the Contact Tracing Team. Case counts are subject to change.
Percent Tested Positive: The percent test positive is calculated using the following formula: Percent Tested Positive = (Tested Positive / (Tests Completed - Invalid)) * 100. Test positivity is calculated using the date the test was administered.
Invalid: The total number of CPS COVID-19 screening program tests that returned an inconclusive result.
Actionable Cases: As of February 24, 2022, all cases reported in the Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing data table are defined by the district as Actionable. Actionable Cases represent cases where an individual either tested positive while inside a district building or tested positive while outside a district building but entered a building while infectious. Non-Actionable Cases are cases where an individual tested positive while outside a district building and did not enter a district building while infectious. Prior to February 24, 2022, the Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing data table included non-actionable cases, including positive results from take-home tests distributed over Winter Break. An update on February 24, 2022 removed non-actionable cases from the table.

Staff Vaccination Requirements for SY21-22

Effective October 13, we amended our vaccination mandate to more closely align with the Governor's Executive Order and Executive Order Extension, which requires vaccination or weekly testing. This means that CPS employees and vendor staff who do not report proof of full vaccination to the district must consent to weekly COVID-19 testing.

As a result of our amended policy, the information provided below reflects the number of employees fully vaccinated and the number of employees required to submit to testing.

CPS Employee Vaccination and Testing Stats

CPS is closely tracking employee vaccination efforts. The chart below reflects CPS staff’s vaccination status as obtained through our district-run vaccination sites and self-reported survey reports as well as the current number of employees currently required to submit to weekly testing.

The percentage of staff required to test reflects a slightly higher % as it includes staff who indicated in prior surveys they were fully vaccinated. These staff will continue to be required to test until vaccination proof is received.

	Vaccinated	Vaccinated w Booster	Required to Test
Totals	61.4%	28.7%	8.9%
Teachers	12,882	8,482	818
Other CTU Members (subs, PSRPs, nurses)	4,709	1,681	851
School-Based Administrators	686	557	44
Other Employees (ESP, hourly, misc.)	10,828	2,447	2,568
Network Staff, Citywide Employees, Central Office	806	818	69

Note: Data last updated May 17, 2022.

Version Notes

As we expand our COVID-19 reporting, we're tracking major changes to this page. View the latest updates below.

April 14, 2022

Added a new dashboard for Students Opted In To Testing to share information about the number of students participating in the in-school COVID-19 screening testing program. Opt-in data is available at the district level.
Updated the daily and weekly cases dashboard to remove counts of adults and students from non-district schools, resulting in slightly lower total counts. Previously, case counts included data from some non-district schools such as charter schools, contract schools, ALOP schools, and SAFE schools. The daily and weekly cases dashboard will only report data from district-operated schools and facilities beginning April 14, 2022.
Updated the quarantined/isolated individuals dashboard to report only data from district-operated schools and facilities beginning April 14, 2022. Previously, counts of individuals in quarantine/isolation included data from some non-district schools such as charter schools, contract schools, ALOP schools, and SAFE schools. All data reported before April 14, 2022 will remain in the quarantined/isolated individuals dashboard.

March 24, 2022

Added a new dashboard for Eligible Student Vaccination Rates to share vaccination data with the public. Vaccination data is available at both the district and school levels.

February 25, 2022

Updated Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing data table on February 24, 2022 to align with the Total Cases dashboard by reporting only actionable cases, resulting in a decrease in the counts displayed in the table.

The Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing data table pulls data directly from our testing vendor, ThermoFisher. Prior to Winter Break, this table only included actionable cases because, by definition, cases detected from the in-school screening testing program are actionable. During Winter Break, positive results from ThermoFisher’s take-home testing program were also logged in this table, but most were non-actionable because individuals were not present in school buildings while infectious. These non-actionable cases were only included in the Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing data table — not in the Total Cases dashboard. On February 24, 2022, CPS updated this table to include only actionable cases to align with the Total Cases dashboard, resulting in the removal of non-actionable cases from Winter Break take-home testing. This update also removed additional cases where individual data for a student who had tested positive was incomplete, erroneous, or outdated.

February 24, 2022

District case counts: Updated the graph and table to display a more detailed breakdown of cases at the district level. The page now displays district-wide adult and student cases that were either self-reported outside of school facilities or confirmed positive by a PCR test through the COVID-19 screening program. Previously, the page aggregated these data points into reported adults and reported students.

School case counts: Updated the graph and table to display a more detailed breakdown of cases at the school level. The page now displays school-specific adult and student cases that were either self-reported outside of school facilities or confirmed positive by a PCR test through the COVID-19 screening program. Previously, the page displayed only closed cases at the school level.

Weekly case and testing data will now only display results for full weeks to align with the city of Chicago’s reporting standard and present a more accurate depiction of circumstances. Previously, a partial week of results were displayed for case and testing data.

The tested positive metric in the screening table will now show only results that were confirmed against a current staff/student record. This vetting process may result in slightly lower testing numbers if previous screen tests were not matched to a student or staff record.

Updated the Individuals in Quarantine/Isolation table and graph to display the proper number of quarantined/isolated students between February 18, 2022 and February 23, 2022. Previously, an error in the district’s contact tracing system resulted in an undercount of students in quarantine/isolation for the 5-day period. As of February 24, the proper count is now reflected in the data on this page.

COVID-19 Data for SY21-22

Daily District Cases

Total Cases

Quarantined/Isolated Individuals

Individuals In Quarantine/Isolation

Eligible Student Vaccination Rates

Students Opted In To Testing

Daily School Cases

Quarantined/Isolated Individuals

Eligible Student Vaccination Rates

Staff and Student COVID-19 Screening Testing

Staff Vaccination Requirements for SY21-22

CPS Employee Vaccination and Testing Stats

Version Notes