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Governor JB Pritzker is expected to announce a statewide indoor mask mandate for every 2 years and up on Thursday morning as well as a vaccine mandate for all K-12 and K-12 employees. higher education to reduce the spread of COVID-19, sources told the Daily Herald. .
The move would come after Pritzker on Tuesday warned “significantly greater mitigation measures” if an increase in hospitalizations continues. The governor was asked about extending a vaccination mandate to all state employees instead of a smaller group of employees who work in gathering places, such as veterans’ homes , Tuesday and Wednesday, but avoided a direct response.
“If hospitals continue to fill up, if that happens, we will have to impose significantly more mitigation measures,” Pritzker said Tuesday in Chicago. “These are things on the menu that we don’t want to go back to.”
On Wednesday, the governor said he was considering several options to reduce hospitalizations.
The news comes as deaths involving groundbreaking COVID-19 cases increased by 30 people in a week, with the majority involving people over 65 or with underlying health conditions, data from the Illinois Department of Public Health.
That brings the total of vaccinated Illinois who succumbed to the respiratory virus to 253 out of a total of 7,326 deaths since Jan. 1, or about 3.5%.
Of the 253 people who died, about 61% were immunocompromised or had an underlying medical condition, such as cancer, and 89% were 65 or older, the IDPH reported.
Medical experts have pointed out that the vast majority of severe COVID-19 cases they treat in hospitals involve unvaccinated people.
On Wednesday, the city of Chicago and Northwestern Medicine joined in forcing vaccines on employees in a bid to stop the spread of the disease.
“In the ICU we see a good number of cases, and virtually everyone who comes into the ICU who has COVID-19 pneumonia is not vaccinated,” said Dr Jeff Huml, medical director of intensive care at Northwestern Medicine DuPage Central Hospital in Winfield.
“The pandemic is quickly becoming a serious disease of the unvaccinated. People have free will and they have a choice, but I would like them to choose to follow the science,” said Huml.
A total of 1,190 vaccinated people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since Jan. 1, less than 1% of Illinois who have been vaccinated, the IDPH reported.
“The vaccine still does what we really hoped it would do at the start, which will keep us from getting really sick,” said Dr. Michael Bauer, director of Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital. “It does a great job. But we are finding that you can still get a COVID-19 infection despite being vaccinated.”
New cases of COVID-19 totaled 4,451 on Wednesday, above the seven-day average of 3,534, with 40 more deaths from the respiratory disease, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported. The seven-day average of deaths is around 19 per day.
On Tuesday, another 28,624 injections of COVID-19 were given. The seven-day average is 24,196.
In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said all city employees must be fully immunized by October 15, and Northwestern Medicine announced a similar requirement by October 31.
“Given the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 and its risk to people with underlying health conditions and children under 12 who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine, doctors and Northwestern Medicine staff will need to complete the COVID-19 vaccination, ”Communications Director Christopher King said.
Both entities said workers would be allowed to apply for a medical or religious exemption. At Northwestern, employees who do not comply will be required to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing, and on January 1, vaccination will become a condition of employment.
Other hospital groups requiring vaccines include Edward-Elmhurst Health, Advocate Aurora, Loyola Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine, University of Illinois Health, Cook County Health, and Rush Health.
The federal government has delivered 16,000,255 doses of vaccine to Illinois since distribution began in mid-December, and 13,861,875 injections have been administered.
So far, 6,719,139 Illinoisians have been fully immunized, or 52.7% of the state’s 12.7 million people. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses several weeks apart.
Illinois hospitals were treating 2,197 COVID-19 patients on Tuesday evening.
The state’s positivity rate for COVID-19 cases is 5.1% based on a seven-day average.
The total number of cases statewide stands at 1,499,022 and 23,816 Illinoisians have died since the start of the pandemic.
Laboratories have processed 78,206 viral tests in the past 24 hours.
Daily Herald reporter Jake Griffin contributed to this report.
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