From the Editor: Our experts entering a new phase of COVID-19 coverage

Marni Pyke covered her first coronavirus press conference on Jan. 24, 2020. Chicago Health Commissioner Allison Arwady said officials were taking the disease "very seriously" but urged people not to be alarmed.

A month and a half later, on March 7, 2020, Pyke was on hand when officials announced they were monitoring 100 cases. By the end of the month, she was interviewing families grieving the first suburban COVID-19 deaths.

Now, two years later, it appears we may actually be emerging from a pandemic that has ebbed and surged unpredictably, sickened millions in Illinois alone and cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. In some manner, nearly every Daily Herald reporter has had a hand in our coverage of the disease, but the two writers who have become our go-to experts are Pyke, our transportation and projects writer, and Jake Griffin, assistant managing editor and watchdog columnist.

They've taken turns covering daily press conferences, and written hundreds of stories tracking COVID-19's chilling numbers and describing the human experiences behind the data.

Pyke describes the experience as a series of constantly shifting "weird new normals" as the two writers, both parents of young children, began "a long, excruciating period of juggling pandemic reporting and dealing with kids at home bouncing off the walls."

Griffin jokes that he should "at least be given an associate's degree in some sort of science discipline" after building and maintaining a database of nearly two dozen spreadsheets since he began charting the numbers "on a whim," mainly because of concerns about claims he was seeing on social media.

Now, the disease may be entering a new phase. Until now, Griffin's spreadsheets have tracked new cases, deaths, tests, hospitalizations, vaccinations and more, but he notes that, with vaccinations climbing and case counts stabilizing, the state's "scientific focus of monitoring the pandemic has changed to hospitalizations."

Accordingly, our coverage will shift, too, although Griffin and Pyke will continue monitoring all the data the Illinois Department of Public Health provides at dph.illinois.gov, because he and Pyke have learned to be prepared for anything.

"In the beginning, I would tell myself (a sudden shift was) probably just an anomaly or a blip, but now I know there's never really just a blip with this disease," he says.