Indoor dining to resume in north-central 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.
Some restrictions were lifted Friday for the north-central region, as well as the state’s northwest region and the state’s 20 southernmost counties.
Counties in the north-central region are: Bureau, Fulton, Grundy, Henderson, Henry, Kendall, Knox, LaSalle, Livingston, Marshall, McDonough, McLean, Mercer, Peoria, Putnam, Rock Island, Stark, Tazewell, Warren and Woodford.
State health officials on Sunday reported 4,162 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, raising the total number of cases statewide to 1,068,829. The state recorded 29 deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 18,208 since the start of the pandemic.
The statewide case positivity rate for the last week was down to 6.1%.
