Cook County could reinstate some COVID-19 restrictions aimed at reducing the number of cases as the county begins to see a third wave of the coronavirus, health officials said Saturday.
Both the city of Chicago and Cook County have each seen more than 600 new daily cases recently, according to Dr. Rachel Rubin, senior medical officer and co-lead in the Cook County Department of Public Health.
A few weeks ago, Rubin said, about 250 cases were reported every day. On Saturday, Illinois saw 2,839 new cases and 13 deaths as the positivity rate rose from 4.1 to 4.3%.
According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, a total of 145,315 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in a recent 24-hour period. In all, a total of 6,188,607 doses have been administered in the state.
Health officials in the city of Chicago have expressed concern about a “quantum leap” in coronavirus cases, saying that failure to curtail those gains could lead to some restrictions being re-imposed after being loosened earlier this year.
According to data from the IDPH, the city of Chicago has seen its seven-day positivity rate rise from 3.2% on March 19 to 4.5% on March 28, a rapid rise that worries some public health experts.
While no decisions have yet been made on reintroducing the restrictions in Cook County, officials say change could come in the coming week, with the main focus on indoor operations.
“The data has shown that it’s not necessarily outdoor activities, but indoor, so these are the things we need to evaluate and look at the data,” Rubin said.
As is the case in Chicago, Rubin said cases are on the rise in Cook County’s younger population, particularly people in their 20s and 30s, because that age group is not largely vaccinated.
Even with the coronavirus vaccine becoming more widespread, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Dr. masks in public and said the end of the pandemic could be in sight if residents remain vigilant.
“The actions you take now will affect what we can all do in the future,” Lightfoot said earlier this week. “We don’t want to be forced to take steps back, or worse, shut these things down because we haven’t done what it takes now to stay diligent. COVID-19 is still there, it’s still killing people in our city. So we have to stay diligent. “