Here’s who’s dying from COVID-19 during the Omicron surge — two years into the pandemic

A nurse tends to a patient with COVID-19 in the Intensive Care Unit on Jan. 5 at Roseland Community Hospital on the Far South Side. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

The current record-breaking spike of COVID-19 cases in Illinois and the Chicago area in particular is being followed by a boom in deaths.

COVID-19 deaths have risen dramatically since last month’s arrival of the Omicron variant resulted in the pandemic’s highest level of infections — just as they did after an initial surge of cases in the first few months of the pandemic and a subsequent wave last winter. And once again, COVID-19 is claiming the lives of Black Chicagoans at staggering and disproportionate rates.