chicago covid update

Watch Live: Mayor Lightfoot, Chicago's Top Doctor to Give COVID Update

Note: The news conference can be watched live in the video player above beginning at around 1 p.m.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city's top doctor will give an update on COVID-19 Tuesday.

Lightfoot and Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. from City Hall, according to the mayor's public schedule. The event can be watched live in the video player above.

Details on what the update may include were not immediately available. But it comes at a time where the average daily number of new cases in Chicago is up to 90 per day - a 69% increase over last week.

The city's average daily case rate was at 41 per day the week before that, meaning it's more than doubled in roughly two weeks - though it is still significantly lower than the more than 700 cases per day the city was seeing earlier this year and last, before vaccines were widely available.

Hospitalizations and deaths are down in Chicago - 11% and 13%, respectively, since last week - but the positivity rate in testing is up to 1.5% from 1% last week.

Arwady said last week that two-thirds of the city's cases in the last month have been in people under the age of 40 and one-third of hospitalizations during that time were in people in that same age group.

Cases have increased as public health officials in Chicago and around the world warn about the more transmissible delta variant, urging those who have not yet gotten vaccinated to do so.

"It's showing that with some new variants here, with some additional spread, you know, the risk is ever so slightly higher than it was a week ago," Arwady said Thursday.

"But the difference is that for people who are fully vaccinated, that risk is very, very low. Whereas for people who are not vaccinated, especially as these case numbers go up, you know, that risk can increase from sort of a low to a moderate to a higher risk. So we're keeping an eye on it," she continued. "I do expect it will probably continue to increase, hopefully slowly, hopefully staying in control, but it's why we're working on vaccinations so hard."

As of Tuesday, more than 2.8 million vaccine doses have been administered in Chicago, with 51.3% of Chicagoans fully vaccinated and 57.3% with at least one dose, according to the city's data.

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