(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The city of Chicago has added three states to its self-quarantine list for travelers.
North Carolina, Hawaii and Nebraska are now on Chicago’s emergency travel order, meaning that travelers from those states — plus 18 other states and Puerto Rico — are expected to isolate for two weeks when they arrive here.
Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady says Indiana could make the list next week.
“We have concerns about Indiana," says Arwady, who encourages residents here from going to Indiana college towns.
Some of them, including South Bend and Muncie, have become high-risk, she says.
Meantime, Chicago residents should keep distancing and not be part of what Arwady called “this surge that we’re seeing broadly across the Midwest.”
“We have a lot of COVID here in Chicago, even now, and it continues to be broadly on the rise. It is not the time to relax your guard. It is not the time to be getting together unnecessarily with people who are not already in your ‘bubble,’” she said.
Arwady says hot spots in the city include the Northwest Side and the Southwest Side. Just over half of the new cases in Chicago are among people who say they are Latinx, she said.
The state of Illinois continues to struggle with an uptick in the number of new coronavirus cases, after bending the curve of new infections over the summer.
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 1,492 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, including 39 additional confirmed deaths. The statwide positivity rate moved slightly higher, to 4.3%.