Chicago Coronavirus Vaccines: City to Extend Vaccine Admission to Most Residents March 29

Most Chicago residents can sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine from March 29, the city’s top doctor said Wednesday.

Chicago Public Health Commissioner, dr. Allison Arwady, outlined the city’s plan to expand vaccinations for residents aged 16 and older with chronic health conditions, plus additional groups of essential workers.

That means a ‘big increase’ in the pool of eligible recipients, which will soon include the majority of Chicago’s 2.7 million residents, Arwady said.

‘Most Chicago residents may be eligible to be vaccinated from March 29, but just because you are eligible does not mean you can be vaccinated right away. It will all depend on the vaccine supply, ”said Arwady.

Meanwhile, government JB Pritzker is expected to announce on Thursday that it will increase admissions to the rest of the state for 16-year-olds and older from April 12.

In the city, residents 65 years and older will enjoy preference. About half of the senior people in the city have received a dose so far, Arwady said.

The soon-to-be eligible Phase 1C recipients are more likely to receive doses through April and May.

The group includes people with underlying conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and sickle cell disease. “Eligible workers will include those who include transport, 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 mandate by May 1 to be eligible for all adults.

“I take it as a sign that the federal government is confident that vaccine supply will increase even faster in the spring, and as vaccine supply increases, we here in Chicago are more than ready to get it in the gun,” he said. said Arwady. .

‘We’ll definitely vaccinate hundreds of thousands of Chicago residents through the summer and beyond, but it’s going to feel more like a traditional flu vaccine campaign where the problem is not finding a vaccine; it is trust and decision. to get a vaccine. ”

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Most parts of the state outside the Chicago area last month already extended the qualification to people with underlying conditions. Cook County suburban officials said they will also do so on March 22, but have not yet announced a date for a full-phase 1C expansion.

The Illinois Department of Public Health reported that 102,390 more vaccine doses were in use Tuesday. It was the state’s first six-digit vaccination day since March 12 and has increased Illinois’ total vaccination to nearly 4.3 million doses over the past three months.

Of that total, just over 1.6 million residents are 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 older received at least one shot, and about 58% of people aged 65 and older received, according to Gov. JB Pritzker received a dose.

The state has now fired an average of 102,223 shots per day over the past week.

While the figure had dropped slightly from an everyday high the day before, coronavirus infection rates had dropped to the lowest in the entire country.

Officials reported 1,655 new cases of the disease were diagnosed in 77,798 tests, lowering Illinois’ average positivity rate slightly to 2.2%, lower than it had been this past summer.

Hospital admissions are also near record lows, with 1,143 beds occupied by COVID-19 patients on Tuesday night.

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But the virus claimed another 17 lives, including that of a woman in Cook County in her 40s and a man in Grundy County in his 30s.

About 26 Illinoiss have died from COVID-19 every day in the past week, a mortality rate that has dropped about 43% in the past month.

Despite the progress, Pritzker warned that a new boom like the one that Illinois suffered 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, ” Pritzker said at a vaccination site in Decatur, central Illinois. “We need to respond faster.”

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