New Illinois COVID reopening plan will be based on vaccination percentages, Kern says
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker will announce plans to roll back coronavirus restrictions based on percentages of people vaccinated, St. Clair County Chairman Mark Kern said Wednesday.
Pritzker and state health officials hinted at plans this week to take incremental steps toward fully reopening. Details were expected to be released later in the week.
Kern did not specify in the county’s daily briefing exactly how state health officials would break down vaccination numbers, whether by region, county, or otherwise.
But a statewide mask mandate is here to stay, Kern said, following a call with the governor’s office.
“The whole thing is based upon the fact that our (COVID-19) numbers don’t start to go up,” the chairman said. “That’s why we’re saying, and the governor continues to say, the mask mandate is going to stay in place until the CDC says that the masks can be removed.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says even the fully vaccinated should continue to wear masks and physically distance when in public or visiting unvaccinated people from multiple households.
The state would take a “phased-in” approach to reopening despite the broad description in Illinois’ original plan, state Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said earlier this week.
“We’ve been thinking about what the different benchmarks would be to start moving (to the next phase),” Ezike said Monday. “Maybe not just an on-off switch, but maybe a dial so there may be one more phase before we get to Phase 5.”
The state was in Phase 4 as of Wednesday. Phase 5 was described as a closer to the “normal” Illinoisans knew, with “all sectors of the economy” and schools reopening, recreation resuming, and conventions, festivals and large events taking place with new safety precautions.
During a visit to Decatur Wednesday, the governor cautioned public health measures would have to balance reopenings. Despite increasing vaccinations, more dangerous and contagious variants of COVID-19 threaten progress in Illinois. Small daily upticks can turn into a resurgence of the virus, he said, as they did from summer into fall last year.
“That’s all part of how we’re thinking going forward,” Pritzker said. “Having said that, let me be clear to everybody, I am more optimistic today than I have ever been throughout this pandemic about where we are going and getting to the end of the pandemic.”
Some doctors advising the governor have said the vaccine rollout is beating the variant, while others are more cautious, Pritzker said.
“We may be able to get past it without having another surge,” he added.
St. Clair County is doing a “good job” of meeting the proposed vaccination metrics, Kern said. Just over 15% of the county population was fully vaccinated as of Wednesday.
“We seem to be well in line with what’s expected from the state, if not above, from where most counties are,” he said. “Let’s continue to see these numbers go down so we don’t hurt ourselves and let’s continue to get vaccinated so we can meet these benchmarks for the state so we can get all these restrictions lifted and get back to normal.”
Illinois Republicans push for full reopening
Southern Illinois Republicans criticized Pritzker for not including lawmakers in reopening decisions and called for fully lifting restrictions.
“The governor continues his go-it-alone approach that he has taken where he’s not including the legislature in making decisions and not even in the conversations,” said state Sen. Terri Bryant, a Republican from Murphysboro.
Pritzker has faced harsh judgment from Republicans since the beginning of the pandemic for setting statewide rules instead of asking for input from the General Assembly, which met scarcely in 2020.
The governor said during his stop in Decatur that state officials consulted with business leaders and health care experts in developing the new reopening strategy.
Bryant says she hopes the governor’s plan will allow Illinoisans to make safety decisions on their own without facing punishment from the state.
“If the governor’s plan indicated that we have to be smart because the virus is still here and these are the recommended approaches, I think people would respect that rather than a hardcore plan where the state police or National Guard show up,” Bryant said.
State Rep. David Friess, R-Red Bud, said the state should move into Phase 5 as originally outlined.
“The Governor shut the State down over a year ago,” Friess wrote in a letter to the editor sent to newspapers Tuesday. “We have a right to know if we have met the Phase 5 requirements and, if not, what is being asked of us before we can fully re-open.”
State health officials reported 1,655 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, including 17 additional deaths for a total of 1,213,765 cases and 20,988 deaths since the pandemic began. The seven-day positivity of COVID-19 cases as a percent of total tests was 2.2% Wednesday.
A total 5,101,825 vaccine doses have been delivered to providers in Illinois, and 4,283,487 have been administered as of midnight Wednesday — 12.6% of the population have been fully vaccinated.
Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report.
