Illinois set to order tighter restrictions on bars, restaurants and gatherings in several suburban counties as coronavirus positivity rates rise
The state is set to roll back reopening restrictions across a wide swath of suburban Chicago later this week as Illinois continues to see a major resurgence of the coronavirus.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is expected to announce Tuesday afternoon that starting later this week, indoor service will be prohibited once again at restaurants and bars in DuPage, Kane, Will and Kankakee counties, an area that’s home to more than 1 in 6 Illinois residents.
The two regions comprising those counties are poised to move back a phase in Pritzker’s reopening plan after the seven-day average of their positivity rates on coronavirus tests rose above a threshold of 8% for three straight days.
Altogether, four of the 11 regions in Pritzker’s plan now would be under the stricter guidelines, which also include lowering a cap on gatherings from 50 people to 25, once the latest rollback takes effect later this week. The tighter rules take effect Thursday in the 20 southernmost counties in Illinois and have been in effect since Oct. 3 in the nine counties in the state’s northwest corner.
And while they’ve yet to meet the threshold that would trigger a reopening rollback, the seven other regions, including Chicago, suburban Cook County, and Lake and McHenry counties, have seen their positivity rates rise in the past two weeks.
In DuPage and Kane counties, the rolling positivity rate was 9% as of Saturday, up from 4.8% on Oct. 3. Will and Kankakee counties, which previously were under the stricter rules for three weeks from late August to mid-September, saw their positivity rate skyrocket again, to 8.6% as of Saturday from 5.6% two weeks earlier.
Statewide the positivity rate stood at 5.5% as of Monday, up from 4.5% a week earlier and 3.5% at the beginning of the month.
While schools are not affected by the stricter rules, some suburban districts announced this week that they were rethinking plans to bring more students back into classrooms, even before the governor’s office instituted the stricter COVID-19 mitigations.
State officials on Tuesday also announced 3,714 newly confirmed cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of known cases statewide to 350,875. With an additional 41 fatalities also announced, the statewide death toll now stands at 9,277.
The state received results from 59,077 coronavirus tests in the past 24 hours.
Over the past week, Illinois has seen the second-highest number of total cases of any state, trailing only Texas and just ahead of Wisconsin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On a per capita basis, however, the state is ties for 13th among states and U.S. territories.
dpetrella@chicagotribune.com
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