Last week, Governor Pritzker Announced that Phase 1b Vaccinations will begin this Monday, January 25. The governor also indicated that the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has permitted local health departments who have already substantially completed their Phase 1A vaccinations to move forward with Phase 1b vaccinations. 

In addition to local health department clinics, the state is making vaccines available at retail pharmacy chains, Illinois National Guard mobile sites, state-run mass vaccination clinics, hospitals and urgent care locations, doctors’ offices, and large employers. 

At this time, and in absence of further details on the Phase 1b rollout, CICI is recommending to its members that facility management contact their local county health departments for additional information on any details on how to get your essential manufacturing employees vaccinated.      

To that end, CICI has included links to several county health departments where member facilities have a presence, but not meant to be an exhaustive list:

Cook

Douglas

DuPage

Grundy

Kane

Kankakee

Lake

Macon

Madison

McHenry

Peoria

Rock Island

St. Clair

Tazewell

Will

While vaccine shipments from the federal government remains limited, the state is aggressively building out its capacity, with hundreds of additional pharmacy sites coming online and the Illinois National Guard deploying to support local health department vaccination sites.

As of last night, 901,025 doses of vaccine have been delivered to providers in Illinois, including Chicago. In addition, approximately 524,050 doses have been allocated to the federal government’s Pharmacy Partnership Program for long-term care facilities. This brings the total Illinois doses to 1,425,075. IDPH is currently reporting a total of 572,389 vaccines administered, including 90,752 for long-term care facilities. Yesterday, a total of 34,649 doses were administered. The 7-day rolling average of vaccines administered daily is 22,585 doses.

CICI will keep you abreast of Phase 1b progress and report back here with any developments.

Many Regions Able to Ease Mitigations: With the overall positivity rate among the state’s 11 regions significantly decreasing, the state has begun to re-classify some regions back to Tier 2, Tier 1, and even further back to Phase 4 as they meet the necessary metrics.  The entire state has been under Tier 3 mitigations since Autumn.  Last summer, the state was under Phase 4 mitigations (no additional mitigation tiering).

For a region to move to back Phase 4, however, it needs:

• A test positivity rate less than or equal to 6.5% for three consecutive days, as measured by the 7-day rolling average; and
• At least 20% available staffed ICU hospital beds for three consecutive days, on a 7-day rolling average; and
• No sustained increase in the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 for seven out of 10 days, on a 7-day average.

Phase 4 allows gatherings of 50 or fewer people, indoor bar and restaurant seating with some capacity limits as well as allowing theaters and museums to open with capacity limits.  At this time, however, only Region 3 (West-Central Illinois), Region 5 (Southern Illinois), and Region 6 (East-Central Illinois) have moved completely back to Phase 4.

Tracker with State Vaccine Updates & COVID-19 Orders:  The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has again updated its comprehensive COVID-19 Tracker (attached to this Update) with separate charts illustrating state vaccine plans, including documents detailing updated state specific orders and mitigation measures as well as executive orders and legislation relating to business liability. 

Update on COVID-19 Cases: IDPH is reporting 1,086,333 positive tests of COVID-19 in Illinois, an average increase of 4,501 new positive tests per day since reported here 6 days ago on January 15.  In total, 15,083,685 tests have now been conducted in Illinois for the virus, an average increase of 86,484 tests per day since January 15. 

The state’s average positivity rate over all 11 regions is at 5.4% for the last 7 days.  You can see where the various regions are at in terms of their positivity rates, hospitalizations, and other metrics at this link. 

Unfortunately, IDPH is reporting a total of 18,520 deaths, an average increase of 78 per day since January 15.

You can also check where these cases are occurring at the State of Illinois COVID-19 website which also contains more information on this outbreak. 

Also, IDPH has a case breakdown of the number of positive cases in Chicago and each county relative to the number of fatalities.  The IDPH website also now includes a breakdown of the cases under each zip code in the state.

For information on other states and countries, John Hopkins University has developed this website that provides invaluable resources at a one-stop location detailing testing and tracing trends, timelines of COVID-19 policies, and interactive maps.

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