(KMOX) - Some areas of Illinois, including the greater St. Louis area, will be under tighter restrictions due to "massive increases in the rates of community transmission" of COVID-19, announced the Illinois governor on Monday.
Governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) are announcing additional COVID-19 mitigation efforts that will be implemented in Region 5 (Southern Illinois), Region 7 (Will and Kankakee counties), and Region 8 (Kane and DuPage counties), beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday.
Those restrictions are as follows:
Bars and Restaurants
- Reduce party size from 10 to six individuals
Meetings, Social Events and Gatherings
- Maximum indoor/outdoor gathering size of 10 individuals
Organized Group Recreational Activities
- Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity both indoors and outdoors
- Groups limited to 10 individuals or fewer
“The situation has worsened considerably in certain areas of the state, with massive increases in the rates of community transmission specifically in three regions. As a result, Regions 5, 7 and 8 – that’s Southern Illinois, and Chicago’s South and Western Suburbs – will join Region 1, Northwestern Illinois, in Tier 2 of our resurgence mitigations starting Wednesday,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Mitigations are only effective if they are followed. The end goal of mitigating the damage the virus is doing to people’s lives is this: keep as much of our economy and our schools as open as possible in a safe manner, and when risk rates in the community surge up, take meaningful action to bring things back down in order to protect ourselves and the people we love.”
Region 5 has been under Tier 1 of the state’s resurgence mitigation plan since October 22 and Regions 7 and 8 since October 23, after seeing a 7-day rolling average test positivity rate of 8 percent or above for three consecutive days. However, the positivity rate has continued to significantly increase in these regions.
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