ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill. — In a call with Metro East mayors and leaders Monday, the Illinois Department of Public Health said increased COVID-19 restrictions were likely coming to the region this week, including the closure of indoor services at bars and restaurants in the area. But after working with state representatives, those new restrictions have been delayed.
According to St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern, the health department said new restrictions were likely to go into place on Wednesday.
"When we came in this morning, we had a phone call with the Illinois Department of Public Health, at which time they informed us that they're pretty sure that on Wednesday — and we pressed them, is this a sure thing or not and they said it's still tentative but we think Wednesday — bars and restaurants will close to inside dining and inside activity," Kern said during the county's COVID-19 Facebook Live update.
Kern said the sheriff's department did compliance checks and establishments around the county and found most of the businesses were following the rules currently in place for the region, but he does not know if that will make a difference in the decision.
"We hope that perhaps they'll consider that," he said, "but that's as it stands now."
At around 5 p.m., the county apparently got an answer to that. A post on the St. Clair County EMA page said the state's health department would continue to monitor data in the region, but no new restrictions would be put in place for at least another week.
"Region 4, the Metro East region, which is already operating under additional mitigations, continues to report increasing COVID-19 positivity rates and will have until September 2nd at their current mitigation level before the state must move to impose further mitigation in the region," a press release from the Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday afternoon.
New COVID-19 mitigation efforts were put in place last Tuesday after the region reported a seven-day average positivity rate of above 8% for three consecutive days. As of Monday, the region's seven-day positivity rate was 9.4%, down slightly from the 9.6% reported on Sunday.
The state health department said it would review the data two weeks after the restrictions were put in place and determine if changes needed to be made to the plan. That deadline would be Sept. 1.
On Monday, St. Clair County reported 79 new COVID-19 cases and no new deaths, bringing the totals in the county to 5,449 cases and 173 deaths. The county reported an increase of 862 tests conducted, bringing the total number of tests to 57,624.
