Officials: 70% of Illinois residents 65 and up have had least one shot

Further reopening on hold as hospitalizations, cases increase

With Chicago experiencing what Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday called a “quantum leap” in coronavirus cases and with infections and hospitalizations on the rise across Illinois, officials are putting on hold any plans for further loosening business restrictions.

A stark reminder that the pandemic is not yet receding, the pause comes as the state on Wednesday reached a vaccination milestone that was supposed to trigger higher capacity limits and other less stringent rules under a revised reopening plan Gov. J.B. Pritzker laid out just two weeks ago. Lightfoot and Pritzker, meanwhile, continued to clash publicly over how quickly to make shots available to anyone 16 and older, with the state set to expand eligibility on April 12.

As Chicago’s daily COVID-19 cases rose to nearly 500 this week, Lightfoot said she wouldn’t call for any more significant reopening plans until new infections subside.

“Seeing the uptick on the North Side that we’ve seen, we are concerned and we’re urging members of those communities, whether it’s Old Town, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Portage Park, Old Irving, that’s where we’re seeing the increase and we’re seeing it in the 18- to 39-year-old cohort across different races. We’re concerned,” Lightfoot said during an unrelated news conference.

The citywide positivity rate as of Tuesday was 4.5%, up more than a percentage point from last week. During that period, the seven-day rolling average of cases went up to 498, a 37% increase from the week before — despite average tests per day down about 4%.

“That’s a quantum leap from where we were even three weeks ago,” Lightfoot said. “That’s concerning, and that is obviously dictating that we have to proceed with caution as we open up. We’re not going to see anything more significant in the reopening front until we see those numbers stabilize and start to come down.”

Chicago public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady has said having 400 or more cases a day equals the threshold for states that get put on Chicago’s emergency travel order list.

Emergency department visits also have spiked last month with a seven-day average landing around 80 visits per day. Intensive care unit occupation remains stable, but Arwady has said those figures tend to lag the rest of the metrics.

Those trends are in line with what’s happening across Illinois, even as the state on Wednesday crossed the threshold of 70% of residents 65 and older having received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

That should have allowed a wide range of businesses, from restaurants to convention centers, to open their doors to more customers — the “bridge” phase that precedes a full-scale reopening under Pritzker’s plan. But state officials said they need to see a sustained decline in new cases, hospitalizations and other measures of viral transmission before loosening the rules.

Right now, cases, hospital admissions and the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals are on the rise statewide.

As of Tuesday night, 1,413 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID19, with 294 patients in intensive care units and 123 on ventilators. The sevenday average of hospitalizations was 1,341, the highest in more than a month.

State health officials reported 2,592 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, for an average of 2,411 new daily cases over the past week.

The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a share of total tests was 3.3% as of Tuesday, up from 2.8% a week earlier. The rate dipped as low as 2.1% during the week ending March 12.

One indicator that isn’t on the rise is the daily mortality rate. The state recorded 785 coronavirus-related deaths in March, the smallest one month total since September, when there were 646 fatalities from COVID-19, and a substantial drop from the 1,273 deaths recorded in February.

December was the state’s deadliest month since the pandemic began, with 4,212 recorded fatalities — an average of 136 per day. The average in March is 25 deaths per day.

Deaths, however, are a lagging indicator of coronavirus transmission, with an upswing in fatalities typically coming weeks after cases and hospital admissions begin to rise.

Officials reported 28 additional fatalities Wednesday, reaching a statewide death toll of 21,301. The total number of known infections in Illinois is 1,244,585.

The state averaged a record 109,358 vaccines administered daily over the last seven days, with a reported 137,445 doses administered statewide Tuesday.

Nearly 2.2 million Illinois residents — close to 17% of the state’s population — have been fully vaccinated, receiving both of the required shots, or Johnson & Johnson’s single shot.

Illinois and Chicago receive separate allocations of vaccine doses from the federal government and set their own guidelines for who can get an appointment. That has led to ongoing tension between two of the state’s top elected officials, along with widespread confusion and consternation among the shot-seeking public.

State health officials last week gave local health departments that have seen lagging demand for appointments the green light to begin administering doses to anyone 16 and older.

Roughly three-quarters of the state’s 97 local health departments, all of them outside the Chicago area, say they’ve already expanded to all adults or plan to do so before April 12, according to a survey by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

But the state’s largest population centers, Chicago and suburban Cook County, have not committed to expanding on April 12 with the rest of the state.

Speaking at an unrelated event in South Elgin on Wednesday, Pritzker questioned Lightfoot’s decision not to open up the city’s vaccine supply sooner.

“I’m concerned, I will be honest with you, that the city of Chicago seems to want to delay beyond April 12 in terms of opening up to everybody,” Pritzker said.

He added: “Let me just be clear, we should be getting every dose into every arm that we possibly can beginning as soon as we possibly can.”

The city’s most recent eligibility expansion on Monday included workers in some industries, such as retail and finance, that are not yet eligible under state guidelines.

Suburban Cook County on Wednesday expanded eligibility to include roughly the same categories of workers as the city, with shots becoming available to anyone 16 and up “in the coming weeks,” according to a news release.

Asked about a potential boost next week in coronavirus vaccine doses sent to Chicago from the federal government, Lightfoot said she hopes the projections are correct but “the proof is in the pudding.”

City officials announced on Tuesday that Chicago will open two additional mass vaccination sites next week, one at a conference center next to Wrigley Field and the other at Chicago State University.