Indoor dining is shut down yet again in Chicago as the city sees new coronavirus restrictions imposed by the state beginning Friday.
Due to continued increases in hospitalizations and positivity rates, Chicago, also known as Region 11, has become the latest region to see intervention from the state, triggering a mitigation plan health officials say aims "cut down on some of the highest high-risk activities until we bring down the positivity rate in a region once again."
"Region 11 is now averaging more than twice as many COVID-related hospital admissions per day as it was a month ago, with a positivity rate that has almost doubled since the beginning of October," Pritzker said in a release. "For a time late in the summer Chicago seemed to have this more under control than other regions of Illinois, but that’s no longer the case."
The new restrictions include:
Bars
- No indoor service
- All outside bar service closes at 11:00 p.m.
- All bar patrons should be seated at tables outside
- No ordering, seating, or congregating at bar (bar stools should be removed)
- Tables should be 6 feet apart
- No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
- No dancing or standing indoors
- Reservations required for each party
- No seating of multiple parties at one table
Restaurants
- No indoor dining or bar service
- All outdoor dining closes at 11:00 p.m.
- Outside dining tables should be 6 feet apart
- No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
- Reservations required for each party
- No seating of multiple parties at one table
Meetings, Social Events, Gatherings
- Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity
- No party buses
- Gaming and Casinos close at 11:00 p.m., are limited to 25 percent capacity, and follow mitigations for bars and restaurants, if applicable
These mitigations do not apply to schools or polling places.
Chicago's non-essential businesses will be able to stay open a little longer as the new mitigations begin, however.
Beginning Friday, all non-essential businesses will need to close to the public from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Previous restrictions had forced businesses to close at 10 p.m.
"This will allow restaurants and bars that can no longer offer indoor service an extra hour of outdoor operations each evening," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's office said in a release.
Restaurants and bars will also be able to allow on-site or to-go liquor sales until 11 p.m. Alcohol sales at liquor stores, grocery stores and other places with a Package Goods license will still be required to end liquor sales at 9 p.m., however.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Chicago’s businesses have stepped up and shown their dedication to the health of their community,” Rosa Escareno, BACP commissioner, said in a statement. “Unfortunately we must ask you once more to do what’s necessary to save lives, but we will continue doing everything we can to support our business community. The more Chicagoans that take this deadly pandemic seriously, the quicker we can get our bars and restaurants open again.”
Chicago's mayor said restaurant owners are struggling during the pandemic and are the most impacted industry by COVID-19 restrictions.
"Some are hanging on by a thread, so we need to double down on our efforts," Lightfoot said. "That's my commitment to them privately and publicly."
Lightfoot encouraged all Chicagoans to support neighborhood restaurants as much as possible by eating there before the added restrictions and ordering takeout after Friday's mitigations are put in place.
After Pritzker on Tuesday announced that new coronavirus restrictions will go into effect in the city, Lightfoot called on the governor to reconsider, saying she is concerned that the new mitigations could have dire consequences for already struggling businesses.
“I'm not sure that we're reaching the right people with the restrictions that are going to be imposed by the state and that's my concern,” she said.
Speaking on PBS’ “NewsHour,” Lightfoot said she was “very concerned” about the new regulations, warning they could have a massive impact on businesses in the city that are struggling amid the pandemic.
Lightfoot was asked if she disagreed with the Pritzker administration’s decision-making, and while she didn’t directly say the new restrictions were wrong, she said that the governor’s office should look at other metrics to help make determinations on where new restrictions should be implemented.
“I think that we’ve got to look at what our metrics are,” she said. “No question we’re seeing an uptick in cases, and we’re also seeing positivity (rates) going up, but hospitalizations are not at the breaking point like we feared back in the spring, and I think that’s an important metric. We’ve gotta be very surgical in the way we impose these new restrictions.”
While Pritzker and Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike have presented research that shows bars and restaurants are one of the primary locations where coronavirus is spreading, Lightfoot warned that the greater challenge is posed by what individuals are doing in their own homes.
“The truth is that where we're seeing the greatest challenges is in people's homes, in social settings that are not public,” she said. “That's harder to regulate to be sure but that's at least in Chicago where we're seeing the challenges. Two-thirds of the people that are testing positive and are talking to our case investigators are telling us that they got it from somebody that they knew and that they got it in a home or other social setting that's not in public.”
Lightfoot says her administration is looking to take “additional steps” to address concerns about gatherings in the homes of residents.
In a statement released Tuesday night, Pritzker's office said it does not intend to "make exceptions" to its mitigation strategy and will continue to work with businesses to secure access to millions in grants through emergency relief programs.
"Unfortunately, the virus doesn’t make exceptions, and it would be ill-advised to make exceptions to the rules we put in place as the best mitigations to stop the spread," the statement read. "As the CDC has noted, bars and restaurants are major places of transmission risk. We’ll continue to provide support to businesses that are hard hit through our $630 million in grants."
As of Friday, the state has announced such restrictions for nine of its 11 regions, some of which begin this weekend.
