
In a news conference on Tuesday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that four regions would be operating under the standard resurgence mitigations by the end of this week, including no indoor dining or indoor bar service and limiting in-person gatherings to no more than 25 people.
"Today marks the third day in a row for regions 7 and 8 to report a rolling positivity average of 8% or above. That means that starting on Friday, four counties: Will, Kankakee, DuPage, and Kane will all see the heightened resurgence mitigations already in place in region 1," he said.
"New restrictions were announced yesterday for region 5, Southern Illinois, so that means four of our 11 regions have triggered our fail-safe state action metric," Pritzker added.
The governor also discussed how the new wave of the virus is disrupting small businesses in these regions, saying, "They will receive priority consideration for the 220 million dollars in the current round of business interruption grants."
According to Pritzker, of the seven regions that are still operating under phase 4 of the Restore Illinois Plan, five are now at a rolling positivity average above 7%, with the other two regions above 6.5%.
"All continue to show increases over last week, and most regions of the state continue to see increases in COVID related hospital admissions," Pritzker said.
"As colder weather approaches and flu season is upon us, we're going to see the rippling effects of these current unfortunate trends."