Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday that she wants to reopen Chicago restaurants and bars “as soon as possible,” which she said will be a conversation with the governor.
“I’m very, very set on reopening our restaurants, if we look at the different criteria, that the state has been set up, we meet most, if not all,” Lightfoot said. “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 restaurants have done ‘far too much’ to put coronavirus mitigations in place, which she says are very regulated and regularly checked. Lightfoot said restaurants and bars are going to be ‘one of the safer places’.
According to Lightfoot, city health officials, after restaurants and bars closed, saw more people without masks move to private spaces, causing the risk of coronavirus spread.
“In the bar space, I think we have a lot more of an opportunity to regulate and control that environment,” Lightfoot said. “People are engaging in risky behaviors that not only endanger themselves but also endanger their families, their co-workers and others.”
She added that she feels ‘very strongly’ that Chicago is ‘very close’ to a point where officials need to discuss the reopening of pubs and restaurants to the public.
Some Illinois counties could begin lifting Tier 3 restrictions as early as this week if they meet the correct criteria, according to JB Pritzker. However, it is unclear which mitigations would be specifically lifted.
The governor did not give a specific day on which a decision on the removal of mitigations would be announced, but he said last week that the earliest regions to leave Tier 3 would be Friday.
“Since November 30, I have persisted – on the advice of dr. [Anthony] Fauci, die [Illinois Department of Public Health] and other experts on infectious diseases – that it would be unwise to downgrade any region from our current level three softeners during the holiday season, when people in particular tended to gather in multiple family groups and do so without masks – the things that could deliver the worrying ‘boom of a boom’, Pritzker said during an update on the state’s coronavirus response on Wednesday.
He noted that the state “did not experience the upsurge after Thanksgiving that plagued much of the country” and said state health officials were “watching closely” the period after Christmas and New Year.
“I am cautiously optimistic because there are early signs that some regions have made real progress and will not reverse this progress this week or next,” Pritzker continued.
“On January 15, exactly one incubation period from New Year’s Day, any region that meets the mitigation reduction criteria can move out of Tier three of our mitigation plan,” he said.
All 11 regions of Illinois have been under Tier 3 mitigation since Nov. 20, lowering capacity restrictions for outdoor dining and other activities, completely suspending indoor dining, closing indoor recreation rooms such as theaters and casinos, and raising other restrictions.
A region can move to Tier 2 mitigation if there is a test positivity rate of less than 12% and more than 20% of the ICU and hospital beds are available for three consecutive days, as well as declining COVID-19 hospitalizations in seven of the previous ten days.