Gov. J.B. Pritzker will lift indoor mask mandate on Feb. 28, but rules will remain in place for schools

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker will lift his indoor mask mandate for most public places on Feb. 28 if the state’s largest coronavirus surge continues to subside, a move that comes as Democratic governors across the country begin loosening rules in response to improving data and an increasingly pandemic-weary public.

Pritzker is not dropping masking rules for schools, however, as his administration seeks to overturn last week’s court ruling that called into question his legal authority for mandating face coverings, quarantines, and, for school staff, vaccinations or testing.

Masks also will continue to be required in health care settings and on public transportation, due in part to federal requirements. Cities and businesses still will be allowed maintain more stringent requirements.

In announcing his decision, Pritzker cited a rapid drop in the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 since that figure reached an all-time high in mid-January during a surge, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, that put enormous strain on the state’s health care system.

“We are on track to come out on the other side of this latest COVID storm in better shape than even the doctors expected,” Pritzker said Wednesday. “If these trends continue, and we expect them to, then on Monday, Feb. 28, we will lift the indoor mask requirement for the state of Illinois.”

Following Pritzker’s announcement, Chicago health officials said they “should be in a position to lift restrictions at that time” if current trends continue.

The Pritzker administration said it hopes to lift the requirement for schools in the coming weeks, but did not commit to a specific date.

“The equation for schools just looks different right now than it does for the general population,” Pritzker said. “Schools need a little more time for community infection rates to drop, for our youngest learners to become vaccine eligible, and for more parents to get their kids vaccinated.”

State health officials will monitor the effect of lifting the mandate for other public settings before allowing masks to be removed in schools, Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said.

“We need some time to make sure that we don’t see some kind of unexpected result,” Ezike said.

The change in course is a calculated risk for Pritzker, a first-term Democrat who has made his handling of the pandemic a central focus of his reelection bid this year. Since declaring the coronavirus pandemic a statewide disaster nearly two years ago, Pritzker has argued that his decisions have been driven not by political expedience but by the latest science and the advice of doctors and other experts.

The move forces Pritzker to explain — to those who’ve supported his efforts and those who’ve opposed them — why Feb. 28 is the right time to allow people to remove masks in many settings, while at the same time arguing in a state appellate court that he should be allowed to continue requiring them in schools.

The governor was quick to dismiss critics who contend the decision is motivated more by politics than by public health considerations.

“These are the same people that wanted us to take masks off or encouraged people not to get vaccinated back when we ... had rising infections and rising hospitalization, so it’s hard to take them seriously at this point,” he said.

Republicans in the state legislature have repeatedly characterized Pritzker’s mask mandate as an overreach of his executive authority, saying such a policy needs to be decided on by lawmakers.

“He has not invited Republicans to participate in any meaningful discussion, whether it’s in a closed meeting of leaders but also on the floor of the House of Representatives and chambers,” House GOP leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs said Wednesday during an unrelated news conference. “The governor has taken this ‘going-alone’ approach too long.”

Durkin also called for an end to masking in schools. “Let’s let parents and children go back to schools without having to deal with this mask situation,” he said.

To lend scientific credence to his decision, Pritzker was joined at Wednesday’s news conference by University of Chicago infectious diseases expert Dr. Emily Landon, who has advised the governor’s office throughout the pandemic.

She called Pritzker’s decision to lift the mandate at the end of the month “aggressive and optimistic.”

“But it’s also reasonable,” Landon said. “This does not mean that no one needs to wear a mask anymore. It’s an acknowledgment that cases have fallen to an acceptable or manageable level.”

Still, some Chicago hospital leaders worry that the move is coming too soon.

“We still need to be mindful that we are not out of the woods and we should uphold the mask requirement to prevent the numbers from spiking again,” Dr. Rochelle Bello, director of infection prevention and employee health at St. Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center in Englewood, said in a statement.

“It’s too soon to lift the mask mandate as there is still risk of acquiring COVID and the flu as everyone in the community is not vaccinated,” Bello said.

Others, however, say it makes sense to peel back the mask mandate this month.

“I think the rollback is appropriate at this point as long as people realize it’s not a directive that you shouldn’t wear a mask — it’s just that you don’t have to,” said Dr. Richard Freeman, regional chief clinical officer for Loyola Medicine. Freeman said that some people, such as those who are immunocompromised, should continue to mask.

Despite Pritzker’s intention to continue requiring masks in schools for the time being, that issue has been complicated by a Sangamon County Circuit Court judge’s decision last week to block the state and school districts named in a set of lawsuits from enforcing the requirement for students and teachers named as plaintiffs in the case. The state is asking an appellate court to reverse the ruling.

The legal limbo has created chaos for school districts this week as they grapple with whether to continue requiring masks or make them optional.

Pritzker’s announcement did nothing to change the situation at Chicago Public Schools, which will continue “to implement all the proven COVID-19 mitigation policies and procedures for students and staff, including universal masking,” CPS spokeswoman Mary Fergus said.

Many other districts have ignored Pritzker’s order and made masks optional for students and staff.

Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery, whose organization includes Chicago Teachers Union, said he plans to work with Pritzker “to ensure that metrics and timelines for any changes to COVID mitigations in schools are developed with the input of educators and parents.”

“Students, teachers, and staff are exhausted and need stability,” Montgomery said. “We owe it to them to ensure that the places where they learn and work are as safe as possible.

After Pritzker’s news conference, Chicago’s Department of Public Health released a statement saying it’s “encouraged by the state’s reported plan to lift its mask mandate later this month” and may be able to follow if key statistics improve. The city wants to see key metrics, like hospital beds taken by COVID patients, fall into a “lower transmission” category.

“If we as a city continue to see declines in these leading COVID metrics, we too should be in a position to lift restrictions at that time,” the statement said.

Cook County public health officials said trends suggest the health department, which covers most of the county’s suburbs, also will be able to follow suit.

The city health department’s statement left unclear the fate of a requirement that customers show proof of vaccines at restaurants on other businesses.

Eleven Chicago aldermen on Wednesday urged city Health Commissioner Allison Arwady to rescind that rule by Friday.

“The measures instituted have helped prevent the COVID-19 variants from overtaking our city. However, the science tells us it is time to loosen the regulations that crippled both virus and business alike,” read a letter signed by those aldermen, who represent Northwest and Southwest Side neighborhoods where many city workers live and voters tend to be more conservative.

The change in Illinois comes in concert with recent moves by Democratic governors on both coasts. In the past three days, Democratic governors in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island and the Republican governor of Massachusetts have announced plans to roll back their states’ mask rules.

The decisions are inevitably politically charged. All five Republicans seeking to challenge Pritzker in November have opposed the governor’s pandemic mitigation efforts, specifically masking and vaccine mandates, and several were quick to renew their criticism Wednesday.

Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who in March praised Pritzker’s handling of COVID-19, on Wednesday criticized Pritzker for allowing everyone to remove their masks “except the lowest risk population.”

“Illinois is being led by a governor who puts politics and special interests ahead of parents and their children. Enough is enough,” Irvin said in a statement.

Bull Valley businessman Gary Rabine, who has spread pandemic misinformation including questioning the efficacy of the vaccines, said Pritzker’s announcement will “compound the chaos by beginning to lift the mandate for the general public but keep it in place for schools.”

In a message on Twitter, Petersburg cryptocurrency venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan questioned Pritzker’s decision, saying, “So Illinois kids don’t have to wear masks in restaurants, stores, museums or church but they do in schools.”

“This isn’t real science — it’s political science,” Sullivan tweeted.

State Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia has been outspoken in opposition to Pritzker’s COVID mitigations, labeling the governor a “tyrant.”

“We’re in a fight for our freedom, and we’re in a fight for the future of Illinois,” Bailey said at a statehouse news conference Wednesday.

Former state Sen. Paul Schimpf of Waterloo criticized Pritzker and Democrats who control the General Assembly for a “complete abdication of duty” by letting Pritzker’s emergency orders proceed unchecked by lawmakers.

The announcements from Pritzker and other governors come even though there is no clear, universally accepted public health metrics for when indoor mask mandates should be lifted in the few states that still have had them.

As Pritzker was announcing the move, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is working on updated guidelines on when states should end mitigations and doesn’t begrudge states already taking steps.

“We’ve always said that these decisions are going to have to be made at the local level,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.

But she said the CDC itself wasn’t ready to call for relaxed mitigations nationally: “Our hospitalizations are still high. Our death rates are still high. So, as we work toward that and as we are encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet.”

At most, well before the omicron surge and proliferation of at-home testing, the CDC set up guidelines based on known infections, triggered with either higher rates of new cases or a higher percentage of tests coming back positive.

Illinois has been able to keep the latter metric — test positivity — close to or below its CDC threshold. But Illinois was well above the CDC threshold for new cases before Pritzker reimposed the mask mandate in late August — when Illinois had nearly four times the CDC threshold of 50 new cases a week per 100,000 residents.

Illinois’ rate of new cases exploded with omicron, with the state’s weekly rate peaking at nearly 40 times more than the CDC threshold. The rate has since dropped fast, but is still about nine times more than what the CDC has said should be the minimum rate before people shed masks indoors.

When pressed by reporters Wednesday, Walensky said the agency was not yet ready to abandon that guidance, but was “taking a close look at this in real-time, and we’re evaluating rates of transmission as well as rates of severe outcomes as we look at updating and reviewing our guidance.”

Walensky earlier in the week said she was focusing on a different metric: hospitalizations.

Omicron has been shown to be milder, albeit still dangerous, form of the virus, particularly to the unvaccinated. But in a society that’s mostly vaccinated, and already with some levels of natural immunity built in, the massive case spike didn’t translate into nearly as massive of a hospitalization spike.

COVID-19 hospitalization figures have dropped dramatically in recent weeks.

As of Tuesday night, Illinois hospitals reported about 2,500 hospitalized with the virus, far less than the peak four weeks earlier of 7,380, but still above the weekly averages of 1,650 in May when Pritzker loosened emergency orders to allow vaccinated people to go maskless indoors in public, and the 760 average when he lifted the mandate for everyone else in June.

If hospitalization rates continue dropping as they have been in the past week, the state could see weekly average hospitalization rates drop below 1,650 in one-and-a-half weeks and below 760 by early March.

Pritzker initially ended his first mask mandate in May only for the vaccinated, insisting the unvaccinated had to keep wearing masks indoors. That made the order even harder to enforce. After infections continued dropping, the governor lifted the mandate for everyone in June, though the unvaccinated were still encouraged to mask up.

The current statewide mask mandate for all indoor public places, regardless of vaccination status, has been in effect since Aug. 30.

Pritzker in October raised the idea of lifting some portion of the mandate in time for the holidays, but that possibility was quickly dashed by another surge that began soon after and was later supercharged by the arrival of the even more contagious omicron variant.

While he said Feb. 28 would mark “the end of the statewide mask mandate,” he left the door open to the possibility that a future surge could lead him to ask people to don face coverings once again.

“There may come a time in the future when we need to do that,” Pritzker said.

Tribune reporters Jeremy Gorner, Rick Pearson, John Byrne and Gregory Pratt contributed.

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com

jmahr@chicagotribune.com