Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on Thursday that she wants to reopen Chicago’s restaurants and bars “as soon as possible,” which she said will be a conversation with the governor.
“I am very, very focused on making our restaurants reopen, if we look at the various criteria that the state has defined, we are meeting most, if not all,” said Lightfoot. “So this is a conversation I will have with the governor, but I want our restaurants and bars to reopen as soon as possible.”
The mayor added that Chicago’s restaurants went “above and beyond” to implement coronavirus mitigations, which she said are highly regulated and regularly checked. Lightfoot said that restaurants and bars will be “one of the safest places”.
According to Lightfoot, after restaurants and bars closed, city health officials saw more people moving into private spaces without masks and causing more risk of spreading the coronavirus.
“In the bar space, we have a lot more opportunity, in my opinion, to be able to regulate and control this environment,” said Lightfoot. “People are engaging in risky behaviors that not only put themselves at risk, but also put their families, co-workers and others at risk.”
She added that she feels “strongly” that Chicago is “very close” to a point where officials should discuss reopening bars and restaurants to the public.
Some regions of Illinois may begin to lift Level 3 restrictions as early as this week if they meet the correct metrics, according to Governor JB Pritzker. However, it is not clear which mitigations would be specifically eliminated.
The governor did not give a specific day on which a decision on lifting mitigations would be announced, but said last week that the first regions could leave Level 3 on Friday.
“Since November 30, I have maintained – on the advice of Dr. [Anthony] Fauci the [Illinois Department of Public Health] and other infectious disease experts – it would be unwise to downgrade any region of our current Level Three mitigations during the holiday season, when people were particularly prone to get together in multifamily groups and do it without masks – the things that could work the worrying ‘wave after wave’, “said Pritzker during an update on the state’s response to coronavirus on Wednesday.
He noted that the state “has not experienced the post-Thanksgiving increase that has affected much of the country” and said state health officials were “watching closely” the period after Christmas and New Year.
“I am cautiously optimistic as there are some early signs that some regions have made real progress and are not going to reverse that progress this week or next,” continued Pritzker.
“So on January 15th, exactly an incubation period starting on New Year’s Day, any region that meets the mitigation mitigation metrics will be able to move out of Level Three of our mitigation plan,” he said.
All 11 regions of Illinois have been under Level 3 mitigations since November 20, which reduced capacity limitations for outdoor dining and other activities, suspended indoor dining altogether, closed indoor recreation venues such as theaters and casinos and other restrictions have increased.
A region can move to Level 2 mitigations if it sees a test positivity rate of less than 12% for three consecutive days and more than 20% of available ICU and hospital beds, as well as declining COVID-19 hospitalizations in seven of the Previous 10 days.