IL COVID restrictions can soon be removed if regions meet metrics, Gov. Pritzker says
Restrictions on Illinois businesses may be lifted as early as Jan. 15, depending on the level of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in their communities, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Wednesday.
Illinois officials had paused any removal of restrictions through the end of year holidays, even as statistics improved in some areas of the state.
Officials picked Jan. 15 as the earliest date for that to happen because it is outside of the time frame when the state may see any potential surge in COVID-19 diagnoses from holiday gatherings.
“We all know that there were people who chose to have a party or chose to get together with lots of other people, which we’ve asked them not to do, but people did it anyway,” Pritzker said during a press briefing Wednesday. “We want to make sure we’re keeping our infection rates as low as possible and so we’ve scheduled essentially one incubation period after Jan. 1.”
The new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has about a two-week incubation period, which is the time between infection and the appearance of symptoms.
All 11 regions of the state are in the fourth of five planned phases of reopening the economy, which comes with its own set of rules. And additional rules were added on Nov. 20. The added rules are known as “resurgence mitigations,” which the state designed in three gradually more strict tiers. All regions are in Tier 3, the most strict.
To relax restrictions, a region would need to see all of the following:
- The percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive, averaged over a week, falls below 12% for three consecutive days. (This is known as the positivity rate.)
- More than 20% of hospital beds, including those in intensive care units, are available for three consecutive days.
- The average number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital declines for seven out of 10 days.
“I’m cautiously optimistic as there are some early signs indicating that some regions have made real progress and won’t reverse that progress this week or next,” Pritzker said. “... These regions can move down not just to Tier 2 but wherever they belong in terms of what their infection rate is and what their hospitalization rates are.”
As of Wednesday, the metro-east was meeting the metrics for ICU bed availability and declining patient population, but not the metrics for availability of other types of hospital beds and testing.
Illinois updates each region’s progress daily at dph.illinois.gov/regionmetrics.
