United Center vaccination sign-up starts Thursday for seniors
Senior citizens can start signing up Thursday morning for appointments at a new COVID-19 mass vaccination site poised to launch next week outside the United Center.
People 65 or older will get first dibs on more than 110,000 appointments that will open up online and by phone at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Tuesday.
The shots for those appointments won’t begin until next week.
If any slots are still available by 4 p.m. Sunday, they’ll be open to other people eligible for shots under the state’s Phase 1B pool of recipients, which includes residents 16 and older with chronic health conditions such as heart disease or diabetes.
“We have a quarter-million seniors who have yet to get their first dose,” Lightfoot said. “In order for us to truly rise above this terrible pandemic, we must get our seniors vaccinated as fast as humanly possible.”
Residents will be able to sign up at zocdoc.com/vaccine, or at (312) 746-4835. Call centers will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. With the huge demand for appointments, officials urge people to use the online sign-up if possible.
The first shots will go into arms at the United Center site next Tuesday, a day earlier than officials announced last week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will administer about 6,000 doses per day in tents set up in the parking lot northeast of the stadium. It’ll be a combination of walk-up and drive-thru services.
The Pfizer vaccine will be doled out in the first wave of appointments, which span the month of March, according to Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady. The site is slated to operate for eight weeks.
“Still, we don’t have enough vaccine for everybody who wants it, but every day that calculus is improving,” Arwady said, calling the United Center plan “a major improvement in terms of our ability to get vaccine first to seniors.”
Fifteen other mass vaccination sites are already operating across the state, and they’ll see their supply boosted by Wednesday as more than 100,000 doses of the new oneand-done Johnson & Johnson vaccine are expected to arrive. That includes about 22,300 doses being sent to Chicago, according to the CDC.
In clinical trials, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found to be 66% effective in preventing people from contracting the disease, compared with the 95% effective twoshot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
But Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike noted that like the earlier vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson doses are “100% effective in protecting recipients against death and hospitalization.”
The latest vaccine comes as infection numbers sink near all-time lows across Illinois.
The state reported 1,577 new cases of the disease were diagnosed among 56,181 tests, keeping Illinois’ rolling seven-day average positivity rate at 2.4%. It hasn’t been lower since last June. The virus also claimed 47 more lives, including those of two Cook County teenagers.
With vaccinations ramping up, Mayor Lori Lightfoot is once again loosening her grip on restaurants and bars, but not enough to satisfy the hard-hit industry.
The revised regulations, effective immediately, allow Chicago restaurants and bars to increase indoor capacity to 50% or 50 people, whichever is less. Limits had been at 40% or 50 people.
Bars and restaurants that had been forced to stop serving patrons at 11 p.m. can stay open until 1 a.m. It’s a vital lifeline to businesses fighting to survive after twice closing their dining rooms during the pandemic. Alcohol sales by liquor stores and other establishments can continue until 11 p.m. Indoor fitness classes can increase to 20 people.
Illinois Restaurant Association President Toia understands the mayor’s decision to cautiously reopen as if “turning the dimmer switch” instead of flipping a light switch.
But he still wants Lightfoot to turn that switch faster — by increasing the capacity for each restaurant room or designated area separated by a plexiglass divider from 50 people to 100 or 150.
“You cannot do catering parties with more than 50 people. We’re moving into the springtime here. You’ve got a lot of communions, graduations, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings,” Toia said.
“We would really like to see it get bumped up to 150 per room. But we understand we move in steps here. So getting up to 100 would be better than 50.”
Yet another big help would be vaccinating restaurant employees sooner by “bumping them ahead” to category 1B, instead of 1C, Toia said.
“Grocery store workers are in 1B. Our workers are essential workers, just like the grocery store workers are,” Toia said.
Len DeFranco, owner of Hawkeye’s Bar & Grill, 1458 W. Taylor St., said Lightfoot’s looser restrictions are “welcome” but not enough for Chicago restaurants in “survival mode.”
Operating at 50% “is just not sufficient to get to break-even to pay your rent, to pay your utilities, insurance, your dram shop, your liquor license and all the rest of the overhead. It just simply isn’t enough,” DeFranco said.
“Those are fixed costs that do not change based on whether you’re closed completely, as we were during the summer, or whether you’re at 40 or 50% . . . . We want more. Nobody’s making money at these numbers.” DeFranco said restaurant owners “don’t want to be reckless” and want to be “good partners in killing this invisible enemy of a virus.” But they need predictability and a “pathway to 100%” capacity.
“What we’d really like is some certainty. We cannot just start filling these restaurants. We have to have staff. We have to get the sous chef in. We have to increase the inventory. We’d like a little bit of predictability like any other business owner,” he said.
“We just don’t see the relationship between 40, 50, 60, 70% [capacity] and a spread event . . . . We were open at 40% for months. The positivity rate went down. We were closed over the summer and the positivity rate went up. It’s common sense that restaurants are not a spreader in any sense. Can they be? Of course. But so can the post office. So can airports. We just have to be careful.”
Lightfoot understands the “great desire” restaurants have to “open back up as fully as possible” after a “horrendous year.” But she also knows what has happened “almost every single time” other major cities have “opened up very quickly with very high percentages.”
“They had to close. I want Chicago restaurants and bars to stay open. Period. So we are taking a much more cautious approach,” the mayor said.
“I know that doesn’t sit well with some folks. But I’d rather be slow and steady and continue to be open than throw open the gates to appease a certain segment and see our cases explode . . . and have to shut it down for a third time.”
Even with the increased restaurant capacity, other remaining city controls will be “rigidly enforced,” said Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Commissioner Rosa Escareno.
Bars and brewers must offer food to serve indoor patrons or establish a partnership with a local restaurant. There’s a maximum of six patrons per table. Bar patrons and restaurant and bar tables must sit six feet apart. Face coverings must be worn at all times — except when eating and drinking and patrons must be seated while eating and drinking.