Illinois officials announced Wednesday new coronavirus restrictions in the state's Region 9, which includes suburban Lake and McHenry counties, after the area's positivity rate automatically triggered enhanced mitigations.
The restrictions will take effect beginning at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced, and will include the shutting down of indoor dining and bar service and the limiting of group sizes to no more than 25 people.
Region 9 becomes the eighth of the state's 11 regions to see the additional mitigations after its seven-day rolling positivity rate exceeded 8% for three consecutive days.
The mitigations include:
Bars
- No indoor service
- All outside bar service closes at 11:00 p.m.
- All bar patrons should be seated at tables outside
- No ordering, seating, or congregating at bar (bar stools should be removed)
- Tables should be 6 feet apart
- No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
- No dancing or standing indoors
- Reservations required for each party
- No seating of multiple parties at one table
Restaurants
- No indoor dining or bar service
- All outdoor dining closes at 11:00 p.m.
- Outside dining tables should be 6 feet apart
- No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
- Reservations required for each party
- No seating of multiple parties at one table
Meetings, Social Events, Gatherings
- Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity
- No party buses
- Gaming and Casinos close at 11:00 p.m., are limited to 25 percent capacity, and follow mitigations for bars and restaurants, if applicable
“As of this morning, Region 9 – Lake and McHenry Counties – has now sustained an average positivity rate of 8 percent or higher for three days – meaning that they will join seven of our 11 other regions in operating under resurgence mitigations," Pritzker said in a statement.
Local
“These resurgence mitigations aim to cut down on some of the highest high-risk activities until we bring down the positivity rate in a region once again. I know this virus is hard on everyone. But this battle isn’t going away by itself. We have to manage our way through it with the tools we have available to us. And there are many of those tools that nearly everyone in our state has available to join the fight," he continued.
Region 9's average positivity rate stood at 8.4% Wednesday, state officials said, marking an increase from 4.8% in September and 3.1% in June. Pritzker's office said coronavirus-related hospital admissions have also increased in that timeframe - now three times as high as in September and five times as high as they were in June.
“With Region 9 being added to the list of regions in mitigation, we are getting close to the entire state implementing mitigation measures,” Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said. “This is not just a warning, but a call to action. We continue to move backwards, losing all the ground we had gained over the summer. We turned the state around once, let’s do it again. Limit your potential exposures by wearing a mask, physically distancing, and limiting in-person gatherings. It will take all of us working together to beat this virus.”
The state health department said it plans to track the positivity rate in Region 9 over the coming days "to determine if mitigations can be relaxed, if additional mitigations are required, or if current mitigations should remain in place."
The enhanced restrictions may lifted if the region's positivity rate averages 6.5% or lower and if there is a decrease in hospital admissions for COVID-19-like illnesses over a three-day period, and if the average hospital and ICU bed availability is greater than 20% for seven days.
If the positivity rate continues to climb and hospital admissions increases for seven out of 10 days, more stringent mitigations can be applied, state officials said.
