No one fined for violating Chicago’s travel order so far
In the four months Chicago has had a mandatory travel quarantine order in place, only warning letters have gone out to people believed to have broken the rules, city officials said Thursday.
No one has been fined so far under the city’s order, implemented by Mayor Lori Lightfoot over the Fourth of July weekend, which requires travelers from states with high coronavirus infection rates to quarantine for 14 days after returning to Chicago, city spokesman Andrew Buchanan said in a statement. He said the city was not releasing information on howmany letters have gone out.
“The primary objective of Chicago’s Emergency Travel Order is to discourage non-essential travel and to educate the public about their role in ensuring our success at containing the virus,” Buchanan wrote.
The order, which now covers travel to most of the U.S.‚ is generally not being enforced aside from signs and billboards telling people that they must selfquarantine. There are no plans to add checkpoints at airports or other passages into the city to crack down on travelers’ statuses, Buchanan said. But violators are subject to fines of $100 to $500 per day, up to $7,000.
Though that hasn’t happened yet, Chicagoans can still get caught violating quarantine after traveling out of state during the course of a city COVID-19 case investigation, Buchanan wrote. Those people could get a warning letter from the Chicago Department of Public Health and, if the case is “egregious,” be fined, he said.
But city officials first hope their pleas for safe traveling will be heard.
“First and foremost, though, we are relying on the public to adhere to the order and, similar to public health guidance on masking and social distancing, to help protect public health,” Buchanan wrote.
Earlier this week, Chicago Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady urged city residents to stay home this holiday season and even avoid the states not covered by the travel order, as the city buckles up for possibly the worst of the pandemic. She joined Lightfoot on Thursday to again warn about the virus’s resurgence, saying the city’s cases could reach 4,000 by Thanksgiving.
“If the possibility of 1,000 more people dying in the city in the next seven weeks doesn’t grab you by the throat as it did me when I started seeing that modeling, then there’s little we’re going to do to move you,” Lightfoot said while defending an optional stayat-home advisory.
Chicago has recorded an average of 1,920 cases over the past seven days, up from 1,410 the week before, and the city’s rate of people testing positive has risen to 14%, Arwady said. Meanwhile, state officials reported 15,415 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 on Friday, topping the record of 12,702 set a day earlier.