SPRINGFIELD, Ill — There will be more COVID-19 restrictions coming to several regions in Illinois after the positivity rate for COVID-19 remains above 8%.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health said the additional COVID-19 mitigation efforts will go into effect in Region 5 (Southern Illinois), Region 7 (Will and Kankakee counties) and Region 8 (Kane and DuPage counties) at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 11.
According to Gov. Pritzker's office, the areas remain above an 8% positivity rate and cases continue to rise after more than 14 days until tier 1 mitigations.
Region 5 has been under tier 1 of the state’s resurgence mitigation plan since Oct. 22 and Regions 7 and 8 since Oct. 23, after seeing a 7-day rolling average test positivity rate of 8% or above for three consecutive days.
The tighter restrictions include a tighter gathering cap of 10 individuals rather than 25 and new table caps of six rather than 10 when eating out.
According to Illinois' COVID-19 dashboard, as of 4 p.m. on Nov. 9, the state had has 498,560 confirm cases of the coronavirus, more than 10,000 people have died due to complications related to the virus and the recovery rate is at 97%.
“The situation has worsened considerably in certain areas of the state, with massive increases in the rates of community transmission specifically in three regions. As a result, Regions 5, 7 and 8 – that’s Southern Illinois, and Chicago’s South and Western Suburbs – will join Region 1, Northwestern Illinois, in Tier 2 of our resurgence mitigations starting Wednesday,” said Gov. Pritzker.
“Mitigations are only effective if they are followed. The end goal of mitigating the damage the virus is doing to people’s lives is this: keep as much of our economy and our schools as open as possible in a safe manner, and when risk rates in the community surge up, take meaningful action to bring things back down in order to protect ourselves and the people we love.”
“We continue to see COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths increase,” said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “Science tells us that when you are in close contact with someone, there is an increased risk for virus transmission. We must reduce the opportunities for the virus to spread. Only when the virus can no longer sustainably spread can we end this pandemic. It will take all of us working together, so please, be part of the solution and not the problem and help us reduce the risk of spread.”
Mitigation measures that go into effect Nov. 11 include the following:
Bars and restaurants
- Reduce party size from 10 to six individuals
Meetings, social events and gatherings
- Maximum indoor/outdoor gathering size of 10 individuals
- Applicable to professional, cultural and social group gatherings
- This does not reduce the overall facility capacity dictated by general business guidance, such as office, retail, etc.
- Not applicable to students participating in-person classroom learning
- Not applicable to sports, see sports guidance
Organized group recreational activities
- Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity both indoors and outdoors
- Groups limited to 10 individuals or fewer
- Does not apply to fitness centers
These mitigations do not apply to schools.