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The Illinois Department of Health on Wednesday issued new guidelines urging residents to stay home and only leave for “essential activities.”
The guidelines, which come just before the Thanksgiving holiday, recommend that for the next three weeks, residents “stay home as much as possible, leaving only for necessary and essential activities, such as work that needs to be done. outside the home, COVID- 19 tests, visit to the pharmacy and grocery store. “
The guide also urges employers to have employees work from home as much as possible during this time.
“We are asking employers to make accommodations for this,” a department statement said. “Our goal is to reduce transmission as the holidays approach so that businesses and schools can stay open.”
Additionally, health officials suggest limiting travel and gatherings.
“In our current situation, with an increasing prevalence of the virus, attending even small gatherings that mix up households, or going to areas that experience high rates of positivity, is not advised and is potentially dangerous,” says the statement: “Please travel only if necessary.” “
Illinois health officials again reported more than 12,000 new confirmed and probable coronavirus cases on Wednesday, setting a record for the highest day-long report of new cases for the second day in a row, the state having also marked the deadliest day of the pandemic since May.
The new recommendations follow a warning from Pritzker that the health department was considering the possibility of further restrictions regionally or even statewide.
Already, all of Illinois’ health regions were under increased state mitigation, shutting down indoor food and bar services and limiting the size of gatherings.
Three of those regions entered Level 2 of the state’s mitigation plan on Wednesday, limiting group sizes to tables for outdoor dining and further restricting the size of gatherings. Only one other region was already subject to such restrictions.
Gov. JB Pritzker said parts of Illinois have seen more than triple the number of coronavirus hospitalizations compared to the first wave of the pandemic and that a group of doctors have warned the state may “overtake its capacity in intensive care beds at Thanksgiving “.
The state saw its number of hospitalizations continue to rise on Wednesday, with 5,042 residents currently in hospitals due to coronavirus-like illnesses. Of these patients, 951 are currently in intensive care units and 404 are on ventilators.
The three statistics are the highest metrics the state has seen in their respective categories since the first spike in COVID-19 cases earlier this year.
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