Coronavirus in Illinois updates: Here’s what’s happening Monday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area
Two weeks into the new year and three weeks after Christmas, Illinois has so far avoided a holiday-related COVID-19 surge, though some metrics saw brief increases in some parts of the state.
Meanwhile, indoor dining will be allowed in the 20-county north-central region Illinois, which includes the cities of Peoria and Bloomington, under the state’s coronavirus recovery plan, officials announced Sunday.
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Here’s what’s happening Monday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area and Illinois:
Indoor dining will be allowed in north-central region of Illinois
Indoor dining will be allowed in the 20-county north-central region of Illinois under the state’s coronavirus recovery plan, officials announced Sunday.
Restaurants in Region 2, which includes Peoria and Bloomington, will be allowed to resume indoor service at 25% capacity, or 25 people, whichever is less, according to the state’s public health department. Reservations are limited to two hours max, and parties are capped at four people; the health department recommends dining only with members of the same household.
The region joins the southern counties in Region 5, which were announced Saturday as the first to enter Tier 1 mitigations. Region 1 is in Tier 2 mitigations, while all others are in Tier 3.
For a region to enter Tier 1 mitigations, the test positivity rate must be below 8% for three consecutive days, and the region must meet requirements for hospital bed availability and avoid a sustained increase in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Read more here. —Morgan Green
A post-holiday COVID-19 surge? Nothing significant seen yet in Illinois, but experts still wary.
Two weeks into the new year and three weeks after Christmas, Illinois has so far avoided a holiday-related COVID-19 surge, though some metrics saw brief increases in some parts of the state.
State data show that both case counts and the positivity rate, or percent of tests that come back positive, ticked up after the holidays. But another key metric — the number of daily hospitalizations for COVID-19 — has continued its slow, steady drop since Thanksgiving.
Experts say enough time has passed for any holiday effects to be emerging, although it still may be too early to see changes in more lagging indicators, such as hospitalizations.
“It’s still early days, and we’re not out of the woods, even though I don’t think we see anything conclusive in the data yet,” said Jaline Gerardin, a Northwestern University assistant professor of preventive medicine who works on virus modeling.
Read more here. —Joe Mahr
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