Crowd limits eased, mask mandates likely next as Illinois enters next-to-last phase of COVID-19 reopening plan Friday
Life may start to feel closer to normal in Illinois beginning Friday, as more people are allowed into stadiums, amusement parks, restaurants and shops, and masks are expected to soon become optional in most situations for people who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The move to the next-to-last phase of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s coronavirus reopening plan is a precursor to all restrictions being lifted, which could happen as soon as June 11. In addition to the looser guidelines of Pritzker’s bridge phase, officials offered some incentives for those who haven’t yet gotten their shots.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city on Friday would join the state in allowing restaurants, bars and other businesses not to count fully vaccinated customers against capacity limits. In addition, the Sox and Cubs will open sections of their ballparks to the fully inoculated that will raise the number of people able to attend games.
Finally, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines saying its OK for those who are two weeks past their final dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to ditch masks in most situations — indoors and out.
“Our fight to stay safe and to protect ourselves isn’t over, but with each day and with each dose, we move closer and closer to putting this pandemic to an end for ourselves, for our loved ones, for the world,” Pritzker said Thursday during a news conference at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, where he announced the amusement park is giving away 50,000 tickets as incentive for people to get vaccinated.
A Pritzker spokeswoman said the governor intends to revise his statewide mask mandate, which has been in place for more than a year, to align the new federal guidance, which the head of the CDC announced at a White House briefing.
“The governor believes firmly in following the science. ... The scientists’ message is clear: if you are vaccinated, you can safely do much more,” spokeswoman Emily Bittner said in a statement.
The city of Chicago will also “broadly” follow the CDC’s instructions, public health department spokesman Andrew Buchanan wrote in a statement, and new rules for businesses and other settings are forthcoming.
Support for the CDC’s new mask guidelines isn’t universal. University of Chicago epidemiologist Emily Landon said in a Twitter post that she is “all for letting the fully vaccinated be unmasked indoors and outdoors.”
“But unless we can reliably ensure that the unmasked are fully vaccinated, best policy is to protect the vulnerable including kids, immunocompromised, and, yes, the unvaccinated by mandating masks,” wrote Landon, who has spoken at some of Pritzker’s news conferences to give scientific credence to his policy decisions.
The most noticeable changes to capacity restrictions under the rules that take effect Friday are at places like amusement parks, sports stadiums, zoos and museums, where limits will more than double to 60% from 25%.
The Chicago Cubs and White Sox first will add special seating sections reserved for fully vaccinated fans, who won’t count against the limit, before increasing to the higher capacity limit later this month.
Chicago has had more stringent rules than the state throughout the pandemic, but Lightfoot said Thursday that people who are fully vaccinated will not count toward capacity limits in Chicago starting Friday.
Restaurants and bars will be allowed to seat more than 10 people in a party if all patrons are vaccinated, the city announced. Lightfoot cited declining and stable COVID-19 numbers for the move. Bars and restaurants will also be allowed to operate within their regular liquor license hours.
Social events will be allowed to have 250 people indoors and 500 outdoors, and meetings, conferences or conventions will have up to 1,000 people, the city said. Those limits all align with the state rules.
City bars with 4 a.m. licenses will be allowed to stay open until then if all patrons are fully vaccinated.
How to determine who is fully vaccinated, and keeping track of capacity limits, is largely being left up to individual businesses. The city has considered the idea of vaccine passports for some events, but nothing has yet come of that. Pitzker has rejected the idea of requiring such a passport.
Pritzker said last week that the state was set to enter the penultimate phase of his plan because COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the decline and a large percentage of the population has received at least one vaccine dose. If those trends hold, all restrictions will be lifted in four weeks.
State health officials on Thursday reported 1,918 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19. The statewide positivity rate for cases as a share of total tests remained at a seven-day average of 2.7% as of Wednesday.
As of Wednesday night, 1,765 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, with 465 patients in intensive care units and 236 patients on ventilators. The seven-day average of total hospitalizations is 1,899, the lowest since an average of 1,858 was reported April 12.
Deaths from the coronavirus is one measurement of the virus’s reach that has not decreased, although any uptick has not been significant, officials said. Pritzker said last week the trend won’t delay reopening as deaths are “a lagging indicator” of viral transmission, with a rise in fatalities typically arriving weeks after an initial surge in new cases.
Officials reported 35 additional fatalities Thursday, bringing the statewide death toll to 22,320. The seven-day average of additional deaths is 26, the lowest since the same average was reported April 30.
The total number of known infections in Illinois since the start of the pandemic reached 1,361,666.
An additional 68,035 coronavirus vaccine doses were administered Wednesday, bringing the total to 10,179,004. Over the last seven days, an average of 76,082 vaccines were administered daily. That’s down from a peak of 132,979 daily vaccinations a month earlier.
Vaccine doses from CVS pharmacies were not included in the latest tally due to a reporting issue, but will be added to the numbers in the next couple of days, public health officials said.
The number of residents who have been fully vaccinated — receiving both of the required shots, or Johnson & Johnson’s single shot — reached 4,656,004, or 36.54% of the total population.
As of Wednesday, 57.49% of those 16 and up have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
Additionally, officials noted that federal CDC data shows 62% of adults in Illinois have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. President Joe Biden last Tuesday set a national vaccination goal of having a shot in the arm of at least 70% of all adults by July 4.
The Pritzker administration is hoping incentives like the free tickets to Great America and Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Rockford will help breathe new life into the vaccination effort. The Illinois National Guard also is planning vaccination clinics at the theme park the first weekend in June, with more to come if turnout is good.
Some of the tickets also are being given to Chicago-area health departments to use in outreach efforts to communities with higher rates of vaccine hesitancy, officials said.
Demand for shots could increase in the coming days as providers began administering Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine to children ages 12 to 15 Thursday, a day after federal officials gave emergency authorization.
Tribune reporter Alice Yin contributed.
