CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Mayor Lori Lightfoot, along with other city officials, announced Thursday new citywide strategy - “Protect Chicago” - an effort to help Chicago bend the COVID-19 curve for the second time. The strategy includes a stay-at-home advisory and new regulations.
"Folks, we're here with some very sobering news. For weeks now, we've been sounding the alarm on the record number of daily COVID-19 cases across our city..." Lightfoot said. "The rapid rise we've been experiencing here in Chicago is being felt across our state, across our region, and across the nation."
One month ago, our daily average of cases had ballooned to 500 cases per day, the Mayor said. That was up from early October, mid-September we were up in the mid-200s.
"Based upon our latest data, we're now seeing an average of no less than 1,900 cases every day," Lightfoot said. "Meanwhile a month ago, our positivity rate was just over five percent. Since then it has now almost tripled to more than 14 percent. In some areas, it's actually at 25 percent or higher."
The Mayor said these are numbers that the city has not seen since May.
"In response to this clear second surge, we have already undertaken a number of measures including instituting a curfew for non-essential business operations and continuously encouraging our residents to avoid non-essential gatherings. However, as I said back then, just a few short weeks ago, if we didn't see a dramatic turnaround and soon, we would not hesitate to take further action to keep our residents safe and healthy. And it's that pledge and commitment that brings us here today," Lightfoot said.
"Due to the alarming and ongoing surge in COVID-19 cases, the city of Chicago's launching our Protect Chicago strategy - a multifaceted and comprehensive effort that includes new regulatory actions, neighborhood street-level activations and citywide public awareness. But here's the bottom line: if we continue on the path we're on, and you and me and others don't step up and do more, our estimates are that we could see 1,000 more Chicagoans die from this virus by the end of the year...
"None of us can keep maintaining the status quo in the face of this very stark reality," Lightfoot said. "Everyone — me, you, everyone — must step up and we must do more."
The Mayor said the goal now is the same as it was in the early days of the pandemic: to bend the curve.
"The more we bend the curve, the more we can reopen our businesses, and get our lives back to some sense of normalcy. We can lower the spread of this horrible virus, mitigate the sickness, and yes, even mitigate the possibility that anymore of our neighbors will die. But unfortunately, as I stand here today, we are a long way from where we need to be. Folks we have to commit, recommit to the fundamentals that got us past the first surge: wearing a mask when you leave your home, socially distancing, washing your hands frequently, keeping yourself out of crowds," Lightfoot said.
The Mayor said now with 'Protect Chicago' the city will be adding new steps to that list, "so that you will have the tools that you need to protect yourself, your family, and your entire community."
The new steps include personal behavioral changes, as well as regulatory measures that will roll into a new stay-at-home advisory for Chicago that will go into affect at 6 a.m. Monday, Nov. 16 and will be in affect for 30 days.
The stay-at-home advisory asks residents to stay at home unless you must go out for essential reasons like work, school, medical visits, or to get food. No visitors should be in your home unless they are essential workers, like home healthcare or educational workers; and no visitors includes family members that do not now today live in your home.
The city is also asking residents to avoid any non-essential travel; and if you must travel, then you either need to quarantine for 14 days or depending upon the state confirm a negative COVID-19 test before coming back.
"While this is tough, and of course this whole year has been tough, we must tell you, you must cancel the normal Thanksgiving plans, particularly if they include guests that do not live in your immediate household," Lightfoot said.
The Mayor said the stay-at-home advisory is needed now because "the increases we are seeing are happening literally across every zip code, every demographic, every age group. However a major portion of that spread is happening in our homes and private venues with friends and family whom we love and trust. In these spaces, we - you feel safe, and you let your guard down and you are not as diligent. We have to stop and reverse this trend in order to save lives."
She said every family needs to come up with their own COVID-protection plan and stick to it in the coming weeks and months. Making a plan will also help if you or someone in your household falls ill with the disease.
"Protecting Chicago means starting with protecting yourself and your family," Lightfoot said.
Aside from the stay-at-home advisory, the city is also imposing several regulatory measures "which we intent to vigorously enforce."
"Ideally, there would be no social events or meetings, but those that still take place must now be limited to no more than 10 individuals. This applies for both indoor and outdoor settings. It includes event venues, hotel event spaces, and alternative event venues such as hotel rooms and rental properties, like AirBnbs..." Lightfoot said.
This advisory also goes to houses of worship, which must limit the number of guests at essential events, like weddings and funerals, the Mayor said.
The advisory does not supercede industry specifications that have already specified capacity guidelines that are in place, such as for fitness clubs, retail stores, movie theaters, and houses of worship for their regular services.
Mayor Lightfoot also wanted to remind employers that they should allow workers to stay home and/or work from home when they are symptomatic and shouldn't retaliate against them.
"We can have no tolerance for that in the city of Chicago. Too many of our low-wage employees are going in because they're afraid that their jobs won't be protected," she said.
If you feel like your employer isn't respecting your health decisions, call the city at 311 "and we will jump all over it.
"We will not hesitate to act if we have credible evidence that you're retaliating against your workers simply because they are staying at home because they are sick."
Meanwhile, other restrictions remain in place as before: private residences cannot have more than six people inside who are not household members; bars and restaurants will remain closed for indoor dining; and the curfew for non-essential businesses remains in place from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
"People are dying. We are seeing a daily uptick in the amount of deaths we are recording in the city of Chicago. This is literally a matter of life and death. And if we see you violating these rules in any way, we're not gonna hesitate to take action. Not through warnings. The time for that is over. We're gonna fine, and if necessary, shut businesses down," Lightfoot said. "We all have to step up and do our part.
"I know that many people are tired and exhausted. The fatigue is real," Lightfoot said. Some are angry, because our lives have been upended. "And even as we put these restrictions in place, I know that our success is fundamentally rested on our ability to work together to find solutions to educate people into compliance. That's a key part of our new program of Protect Chicago."
CDPH will deploy up to 2,000 city workers — including up to 550 tracers — to reach out to at least half of the city's households. Contact tracers will support phone banking, peer-to-peer text campaign, door knocking, etc. About 1,100 Safe Passage workers will distribute door hangers in multiple language and fliers.
"We will also be providing community-based organizations with specialized support and training to strengthen their ongoing efforts and to deploy trusted neighbors to knock on the doors and distribute information," the Mayor said.
Why? Because people are skeptical and scare, Lightfoot said, and we cannot leave them behind. There are zip codes where "we're seeing extraordinarily high numbers of infection rates, extraordinarily high numbers of percent positivity, and we've got to do more to reach our neighbors."
"This hyperlocal focus, grassroots, door-to-door is gonna be indispensable as part of our ongoing efforts to protect each other during this difficult time. If we can make breakthroughs in the communities that need us most, that is gonna go a long way in helping us overall bend the curve. We have to build trust," Lightfoot said.
All Chicagoans can expect to see this campaign and messaging in billboards, social media, and more "to raise awareness across our communities. I want to encourage every Chicagoan to sign up to be part of this campaign, Protect Chicago, through online and become part of the online team. You can sign up at Chicago.gov/Protect.
These next few weeks are "crucial" in determining how we start 2021.
"We have to step up and lead, and we need you, every one of you, to be part of this journey with us. All of our lives are interconnected in ways we never realized before this pandemic. And because of that interconnectivity, we all must step up and do our part," Lightfoot said.
Dr. Arwady said she is more worried about COVID right now than she has been at any point since March.
"In March, I was worried because we perhaps didn't have enough ventilators. But in March, I knew that we were taking this seriously as a city. And we were doing that largely out of fear. At this point, we all know somebody who's had COVID. And, in fact, in Chicago, given what our numbers look like, a lot of us know someone who's had COVID just in the last few weeks," she said.
Most recover, but when you are talking about the numbers we're seeing now, "those numbers start to impact people who are older, who have underlying conditions. We start seeing, and are seeing, rises in hospitalizations, ICUs, ventilators and deaths. We've seen no sign of slowing here. And we're in uncharted territory. We are the largest city in the part of the country that is having the most uncontrolled outbreak. Every opportunity that COVID has to spread here is an exponential opportunity. It takes very little time for these numbers to get to a point where we do again start to overwhelm hospitals, where we do again start to talk about deaths in ways that I hope to never have to talk about.
"And, yes, a vaccine is coming, the news on that is good. But a vaccine is not the next few months. And the next few months, winter, the flu, and COVID fatigue have the potential to truly create a catastrophe that could be avoided here."
She said our doubling time remains 12 days. Right now, we get about 2,000 new cases every day. By Thanksgiving, we could have 4,000 new cases every day, Dr. Arwady said.
"We're not set up for this level of outbreak. And if you look at that curve, there's been no sign yet of it slowing down," she said.
The concern is the test positivity rate has about tripled over the past month. If new cases were all related to testing, the test positivity would've gone down. It going up means we're not even keeping up with the testing we need to be doing.
"We are not set up for a 12-day doubling rate in a city of 2.7 million people to handle COVID," Dr. Arwady said. "In the last month, three times as many people with COVID-19 in Chicago hospitals as just one month ago. 873 people, right now, not in the ICU but in a Chicago hospital, compared to just 291 a month ago. And, again, no sign of that slowing down.
"The way we see COVID work, the surge in cases comes first. Then, a few weeks later, the surge in hospitalizations. Then ICU, ventilator — and then death," she said.
"The things that we've put forward toward are largely things that are about you making a decision in your life, right? They're about saying, 'I'm not gonna have people over. I'm not gonna do things that aren't essential.' Not forever, but not while we're seeing numbers like this."