CHICAGO (AP) - The spread of COVID-19 has slowed enough to ease restrictions in three Illinois regions but in other areas, including Chicago, tougher restrictions will remain in place, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Friday.
Pritzker also announced some encouraging news for bars and restaurants, saying during a news conference that they can resume limited indoor service sooner than the original rules allowed if the COVID-19 metrics continue to improve. Under the new rules, restaurants will be allowed to resume indoor dining at 25% capacity or a maximum 25 customers if the region hits certain benchmarks, including a seven-day average positivity rate below 8% for three straight days.
Pritzker said stricter Tier 3 rules have been lifted in favor of Tier 2 rules in the central Illinois region that includes Peoria and Bloomington, counties at the southern tip of the state, and counties in northwest Illinois. That means activities such as group fitness classes and gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed, retail businesses will be able to increase capacity limits and museums and other cultural institutions can reopen.
“Of our remaining regions, the data shows that most are on track to leave Tier 3 in the coming days if current trends hold,” Pritzker said.
But on the day when the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 6,642 new confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases and another 123 COVID-19 deaths in the state in the past 24 hours, state and Chicago public health officials announced that Illinois has recorded its first case of the new variant of the virus from the United Kingdom.
The arrival of the variant was not a surprise, given that it has spread to about a dozen states in recent weeks. The state’s public health director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, said that while the variant spreads more easily than the one already in the United States, there is no evidence that it is more severe or causes more deaths.
Still, she warned, “If we do not continue to wear our masks, watch our distance and avoid gathering, this new variant could sweep across the state as it swept across the U.K.”
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