CHICAGO — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker doubled down Thursday on his efforts to deal with a resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic’s delta variant as schools reopen by requiring all educators from kindergarten through college to be vaccinated along with higher education students and all health care workers in the state.
Additionally, Pritzker imposed a statewide mandate requiring the masking of people age 2 and above in indoor locations as the variant has led to increasing hospitalizations among younger people and the unvaccinated, along with increasing reports of “breakthrough cases” among those who are vaccinated.
“Let’s be clear, vaccination is the most effective tool we have for keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths. Nearly all Illinoisans who are hospitalized with COVID are the Illinoisans who are not vaccinated. And those hospitalizations are only increasing,” Pritzker said.
Citing an increase of intensive care unit usage that has multiplied by seven and data showing that from January through July 98% of positive cases, 96% of hospitalizations and 95% of deaths are among unvaccinated people, Pritzker said, “You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to understand what’s going on here. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
A Chicago Tribune analysis of state and federal data has found that the rate of hospitalization for the unvaccinated has risen nearly sevenfold since the end of June. The weekly rate of hospital admittance for that group is now above 28 per 100,000 residents, approaching the peak of 35 last fall.
The vaccine doesn’t stop every bad case, but the analysis found that, for those fully vaccinated, the weekly hospital admittance rate is far lower, barely 2 per 100,000 residents, albeit still about four times higher than it was at the end of June, before the surge in delta cases.
Educators who do not take the vaccine effective Sept. 5 will be required to undergo testing.
Pritzker’s vaccine mandate affects all health care workers, including nursing home employees, all pre-kindergarten through 12th grade teachers and staff, as well as higher education personnel and eligible students. Employees in those settings and higher education students who are unable or unwilling to receive the vaccine will be required to get tested for COVID-19 at least once per week.
The Democratic governor’s announcement came only days after he said he had no plans to expand a vaccine mandate beyond state and private workers in congregate settings, such as nursing homes, prisons and veterans’ homes. Those comments came Monday following the federal Food and Drug Administration’s full use approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which had previously received FDA emergency authorization during the pandemic.
The Pfizer full-use authorization is for people age 16 and above, meaning the vast majority of grade school students are not cleared for vaccination. The FDA has not yet granted full use authorization for the other two vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
Shortly before Pritzker’s announcement, Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs called on the governor to call a special legislative session to bring his health experts before the General Assembly to “examine their data and plans, review the results of your many previous mandates and together plot a course of action that will work” to curb the COVID-19 resurgence.
“You are willing to negotiate with your biggest supporters, the public sector unions, on the pandemic response, but still will not listen to the General Assembly or the residents of Illinois most impacted by your actions,” Durkin wrote in a letter to Pritzker.
Republicans have chafed over a lack of input into Pritzker’s executive actions amid a Democratic controlled General Assembly generally satisfied with ceding authority for the pandemic response to the Democratic governor. Durkin said Pritzker contacted him Wednesday night to solicit response recommendations to the pandemic but did not inform him of the plans the governor detailed Thursday.
With schools gearing up for more in-person learning, Pritzker earlier this month had ordered a masking mandate for students, faculty and staff in early childhood learning centers and elementary and high schools and said schools and districts that did not comply faced sanctions, including the possible loss of state funding and participation in Illinois High School Association athletics.
The issue of vaccine mandates has been a controversial one involving government employees. Pritzker’s requirement for workers in congregate settings has been challenged by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, the state’s largest employee union. The union, which has supported vaccination, has said the issue is a matter of collective bargaining. Pritzker said his administration is in negotiations with AFSCME on the issue.
Officials for the state’s largest public teachers’ unions — the Illinois Education Association, which represents primarily suburban school districts, and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, whose ranks include the Chicago Teachers Union — embraced Pritzker’s new mandate.
“The surge of COVID-19 cases in our state reminds us that this vaccine mandate is a public health imperative. To implement it properly, widespread education and access to vaccines will be essential. For members who cannot, or will not, get vaccinated, we are glad to see the governor has implemented weekly COVID testing,” the unions said.
On Tuesday, Pritzker said he was serious about sanctioning school districts that defied his masking mandate, citing schools that have closed in neighboring states because of COVID-19 outbreaks.
“I realize that there are people who like to show up and shout at local school boards, at the local school board members. But the reality is that the vast majority of people in Illinois want to make sure that the children of Illinois, their parents, their communities are safe. And having a mask mandate operative in schools will help to do that,” he said.
On Wednesday, he dismissed a conservative radio commentator who has regularly opposed Pritzker’s mitigation efforts, including at public rallies. After the commentator questioned the efficacy of masking, Pritzker contended she had a political agenda and spread misinformation and said, “We now need to protect our children, we need to protect the people in our communities, parents, grandparents, teachers.”
Pritzker’s comment came as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who previously required CPS employees to be vaccinated or provide proof of a valid reason not to take the shot, expanded her vaccine mandate to include all city workers. Chicago Federation of Police head John Catanzara compared the mandate to “Nazi” Germany. The Chicago Federation of Labor, while supportive of vaccines, said it supported other efforts in lieu of a vaccine mandate.
Prior to his anticipated call for a vaccine mandate of school employees, Pritzker’s school masking mandate has created some tensions in suburban and Downstate districts, including some private schools who have argued it runs against the state’s tradition of local control of schools.
A downstate attorney who has been unsuccessful in previous challenges to Pritzker’s emergency mitigation orders had been seeking support from school districts and parents to launch another lawsuit, encouraged by former state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton, who lost a bid for the GOP nomination for governor in 2018 and an effort for Congress in the west and north suburban 6th District a year ago.
Several institutions of higher education have already imposed a vaccination mandate for students, faculty and staff, including the University of Illinois system. The U. of I., which developed the Shield Illinois saliva-based test for COVID-19, is being used in 1,200 grade and elementary schools in the state.
In recent weeks, nearly all of the largest health care systems in the Chicago area have also already announced vaccine mandates for their workers, unless they get approved medical or religious exemptions. Loyola Medicine was the first big hospital system in the area to announce, in July that it would require shots for workers.
In many cases, the hospital systems are not giving workers an option to test weekly instead of getting vaccinated. Advocate Aurora Health, University of Chicago Medicine, Edward-Elmhurst Health and Sinai Chicago have said that workers who don’t get vaccinated could lose their jobs.
Northwestern Medicine said Wednesday it would require its workers to either get vaccines or be tested weekly, until Jan. 1, at which point weekly testing would no longer be an option for those without approved exemptions.
Wednesday, state health officials Wednesday reported 4,451 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19.
Over the past week, the state has averaged 3,534 new cases a day — a significant jump since early July when the state was consistently averaging fewer than 1,000 cases a day.
The case positivity rate — the percentage of cases as a share of total tests — reached a seven-day average of 5.1% as of Tuesday, up from 3.3% a month ago.
Hospitalizations also continue to rise, with 2,197 COVID-19 patients in hospital beds as of Tuesday night. That’s the highest number of hospitalizations since mid-April. As of Tuesday night, 515 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds, up from 159 a month earlier.
Over the past week, the state has averaged 24,196 vaccinations a day.
