Chicago coronavirus vaccines: city should expand vaccine eligibility to most residents March 29

Most Chicago residents will be eligible to sign up for COVID-19 vaccination appointments from March 29, the city’s top doctor said on Wednesday.

Chicago Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Allison Arwady, outlined the city’s plan to expand vaccine eligibility for city residents age 16 and older with chronic health conditions, as well as additional groups of essential workers.

That means “a huge increase” in the pool of eligible beneficiaries, which will soon include the majority of Chicago’s 2.7 million residents, Arwady said.

“Most Chicagoans will be eligible to be vaccinated as of March 29, but just because you are eligible, that does not mean you can be vaccinated immediately. Everything will depend on the vaccine supply, ”said Arwady.

In the meantime, Governor JB Pritzker is due to announce on Thursday that he will expand the vaccine’s eligibility to the rest of the state to over 16s from April 12.

For the city, residents aged 65 and over will continue to be a priority. About half of the city’s elderly people have received a dose so far, Arwady said.

Those who will soon be eligible for Phase 1C are more likely to start receiving doses by April and May.

This group includes people with underlying diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and sickle cell disease, among others. Newly qualified workers will include those in transportation, hospitality, food service, finance, media, information technology and others “with a focus on those who cannot work from home,” said Arwady.

After that, the city plans to follow President Joe Biden’s directive to open eligibility for all adults by May 1.

“I’m taking this as a sign that the federal government is confident that vaccine supplies will increase even faster in the spring, and as vaccine supplies increase, we are more than ready here in Chicago to put them in practice, ”said Arwady. .

“We will definitely still be vaccinating hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans during the summer and beyond, but this will start to look more like a traditional flu vaccine campaign, where the problem is not finding a vaccine, it is having confidence and make the decision to get a vaccine. “

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Most of the state outside the Chicago area has already expanded eligibility last month for people with underlying illnesses. Authorities in Cook’s suburban district said they will do the same from March 22, but have not yet announced a date for a full expansion of Phase 1C.

The Illinois Department of Public Health reported that another 102,390 doses of vaccine went to arms on Tuesday, marking the state’s first six-digit vaccination day since March 12 and increasing Illinois’ overall vaccination count to almost 4 , 3 million doses administered in the last three months.

Of that total, just over 1.6 million residents have been fully immunized, or 12.6% of the population, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

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About 28% of residents aged 16 and over have already received at least one injection, and about 58% of people aged 65 and over have already received a dose, according to Governor JB Pritzker.

The state now has an average of 102,223 injections administered per day in the past week.

Although that number fell slightly from a historical record set the day before, coronavirus infection rates have dropped to historic low levels across the state.

Officials reported 1,655 new cases of the disease were diagnosed among 77,798 tests, lowering Illinois’ average positivity rate slightly to 2.2%, lower than it already fell last summer.

Hospital admissions are also close to a record level, with 1,143 beds occupied by COVID-19 patients on Tuesday night.

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But the virus claimed an additional 17 lives, including those of a Cook County woman in her 40s and a Grundy County man in her 30s.

Approximately 26 Illinois residents died of COVID-19 every day last week, a death rate that fell by about 43% last month.

Despite this progress, Pritzker warned that another wave like the one he suffered in Illinois last fall is not out of the question, especially with three more infectious variants of the virus detected in the state.

“We want to be careful here. These variants move faster than the original COVID-19, ”said Pritzker at a Decatur vaccination site in central Illinois. “We have to react more quickly.”

Last year, more than 1.2 million residents contracted COVID-19, and 20,988 of them died.