Illinois will mostly lift its mask mandate, but officials still encourage wearing them
Illinois will end its mask mandate for most indoor settings at the end of February, shifting the decision away from the state on wearing face coverings.
The state will no longer require masks in places like grocery stores, retail shops, entertainment venues and other indoor settings after Feb. 28. But businesses, local governments, doctor offices and other places can still choose to require people to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The state also will require masks in K-12 schools.
Public health officials still strongly recommend people wear masks indoor in public places.
“This does not mean that no one needs to wear a mask anymore,” said Dr. Emily Landon, an infectious disease specialist and chief hospital epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine. “It’s an acknowledgment that cases have fallen to an acceptable or manageable level.”
Vaccinations and “a cushion of immunity” from omicron variant cases will help keep the risk of COVID-19 exposure low, meaning a statewide mask mandate is “less impactful,” Landon said at a news conference in Chicago. Cases and hospitalizations will still happen, but at a level hospitals can handle.
Masks will still be required in certain places, including where they’re federally mandated: on public transportation, at health care facilities and in nursing homes. Daycares should follow Department of Children and Family Services guidelines, according to the governor’s office, and the mask requirement continues in prisons.
Those who are more susceptible to severe COVID-19 infection might consider continuing to wear a mask, Landon said. That might include immunocompromised, elderly and unvaccinated people.
“The lifting of the state mask requirement should not invite people not wearing masks to dissuade those who choose to wear masks,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said.
A political decision?
Pritzker is among a handful of governors allowing their mask mandates to expire, raising questions about whether the decision was political in an election year.
New York’s governor announced this week the state will lift its mandate except for schools. Similar mandates are also dropping in Delaware, Oregon and California. New Jersey and Connecticut announced they will lift school mask mandates.
Republicans criticized Pritzker, saying his decision was political. The governor is up for reelection this year.
“Beginning next month, our state’s senior citizens will be allowed to go to the casino without a mask but can’t return to their assisted-living facility without one,” said state Sen. Terri Bryant, a R-Murphysboro. “It has become clear that the Governor is choosing to follow political science. Even states like New York and New Jersey have been more reasonable than our Governor who has treated our state like his personal fiefdom since the onset of this pandemic instead of the Democracy he was elected to represent.”
Pritzker said his decision was based on a drastic drop in hospitalizations and models that suggest numbers will continue decreasing. He said it’s hard to take critics seriously.
“These are the same people that wanted us to take masks off or to encourage people not to get vaccinated back when we had rising infections and rising hospitalizations,” Pritzker said.
Dr. Alex Garza, chief community health officer for SSM health systems in St. Louis, said there’s a “political reality” to governors allowing mask mandates to expire. Yet every section of the country is at a different place in the pandemic.
The omicron wave hit the northeast first and the Midwest followed roughly two weeks behind, and the reduction in cases and hospitalization is following a similar trajectory, Garza said. By the end of February, Illinois “could be getting close to where we were before the surge started.”
“I can understand where (Pritzker’s) epidemiologists are telling him, ‘Hey, if everything continues like it is right now, we should be in a pretty good spot with the number of cases to allow the mask requirement to go away.’”
Decreasing COVID cases
Waiting to lift the mandate until Feb. 28 gives the state more time to ensure cases and hospitalizations continue decreasing, Landon said.
The state saw COVID-19 hospitalizations peak at roughly 7,400 during the height of the most recent wave. Those numbers began decreasing rapidly in late January and were at just above 2,500 as of Tuesday, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported.
It’s the fastest decline in COVID-19 hospitalization measurements since the pandemic began, Pritzker said. Vaccines and masks helped the state emerge from the omicron variant surge.
Masks have been required in indoor public places statewide since August 30 when hospitalizations were at around 2,200. The state’s first mask mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic went into effect on May 1, 2020, when hospitalizations were at 4,719, and wasn’t lifted until June 11, 2021, when there were less than 700 COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide.
Illinois saw a record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in January this year, followed by November 2020 when nearly 6,200 patients strained hospital systems.
As of Wednesday morning, 45 people with COVID-19 were hospitalized in St. Clair County, according to information published by Memorial Hospitals in Belleville and Shiloh, Touchette Regional Hospital in Cahokia Heights and HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in O’Fallon. That’s down from a recent high of 136 COVID-19 patients on Jan. 12 amid the omicron wave.
A little over half of the metro-east’s population is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Illinois Department of Public Health Of the more than 660,000 people who live in the metro-east region, 55% were fully vaccinated as of Wednesday. Nearly 63% of the population statewide is fully vaccinated.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 4:35 PM.
