Gov. JB Pritzker warned Tuesday that if Illinois’ COVID metrics do not decline, “significantly greater mitigations” could be imposed on the state.
“We’re constantly looking at the menu of options we might have to impose to reduce numbers,” Pritzker said during a press conference. “I’ll remind you that if we’re not able to cut those numbers, if hospitals continue to fill up, if hospital beds and ICUs fill up like they’re in Kentucky – that’s next to Illinois – if that happens, it will have to impose significantly greater mitigations. “
As of Tuesday, 37 Illinois and Chicago counties were on an “alert level” for the availability of beds in the intensive care unit, according to data from the state health department.
For a county to reach the “alert level,” it must have a bed capacity of less than 20%, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported.
All but one of the counties in Illinois also see a “high” community transmission of COVID-19, placing most of the state in the category in which all ages 2 and older should continue to wear a mask. ‘interior, regardless of the state of vaccination, say health officials.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines late last month to recommend that fully vaccinated people re-use masks indoors in areas of the United States that see a “substantial” transmission or ” high “of COVID-19.
Illinois health officials reported 24,682 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday last week, along with an additional 126 deaths and nearly 235,000 new vaccine doses administered, an increase in all metrics as the state continues to see an increase driven by the delta variant.
At midnight on Thursday, 2,000 patients were hospitalized due to COVID in the state, 21% more than the previous week. Of these patients, 468 were in ICU beds and 234 in ventilators. All metrics represent an increase from the previous week’s figures.
Pritzker said the intense mitigations could include these “phases,” which led to restrictions at both the regional and state levels before the pandemic, though he did not provide many details.
“These are things we don’t want to go back to,” he said, “they’re, you know, phases, situations, things on the menu that I think we don’t want to go to but right now.”
Pritzker noted that increased mitigations have already been implemented statewide, including an indoor mask warrant in schools, a vaccine warrant for state employees in congregated settings, a vaccine requirement for nursing home staff. grandparents and a mask warrant on all state buildings.
Meanwhile, both Chicago County and Cook Suburbs have issued independent mask warrants requiring all persons over the age of 2 to wear masks in indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status.
Last week, the governor refused to give a specific metric in which the state could impose a similar internal masking mandate, leaving the door open to future mitigations, but helping local authorities take action, even all when he called the current increase in COVID-19 by the delta variant a “very dangerous moment.”
Earlier this month, Pritzker unveiled a new mask mandate specifically for schools, which required (rather than recommending) that all students, faculty, and staff at K-12 schools wear masks at the school. ‘interior, with immediate effect.
Later, the Illinois State Board of Education temporarily released several schools and districts across the state or changed their status with the state to “unrecognized” for non-compliance.
When asked about this action at an unrelated press conference on Friday, Pritzker said schools that do not meet the requirement endanger students and their communities at a “very dangerous time.”
“What I can tell you is that those schools that do not meet the mask requirements for their children are endangering their children, they are also endangering the people who work in the school, parents and grandparents leave their kids at school, ”Pritzker said.
“We are living in a very dangerous time of coronavirus, a rise in the delta variant across the nation and here in Illinois,” he continued. “I am deeply concerned, above all, that the delta variant has an increasingly serious medical impact on younger people, not only on young children going to school, but on older children in high school and in the young teachers who come to work in schools every day, We try to just ask people to make sure people follow a mitigation that we know works. ”