CHICAGO — More than two months after most COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, Chicago announced Tuesday it’s reimposing an indoor mask mandate — and businesses prepared for possible renewed pushback from customers.
Starting Friday, anyone aged 2 and older will have to wear a face mask in indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccine status.
“With the highly transmissible Delta variant causing case rates to increase, now is the time to re-institute this measure to prevent further spread and save lives,” Chicago public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said in a statement. “We continue to track the data closely and are hopeful this will only be temporary and we can bend the COVID curve, as we’ve done in the past.”
The mandate will apply to places including gyms, common areas of apartment or condo complexes, private clubs and bars and restaurants, though patrons will be able to remove their masks while eating or drinking. Masks can be removed in workplaces that are not open to the public, if employees are “static” and can maintain 6 feet of social distancing, according to a city news release.
Masks were already required in schools based on a statewide mandate issued by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
The governor does not have plans to implement a broader statewide mask mandate at this time, spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said Tuesday.
But the state continues to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that everyone wear masks in indoor public places, regardless of vaccination status, in areas of substantial or high coronavirus transmission. According to the latest CDC data, that includes all but one of Illinois’ 102 counties.
At a news conference Tuesday announcing the new mandate, Arwady said officials are “hopeful that having the mask in place for everybody will get us through delta, while we keep working on getting folks vaccinated and with doing that, our goal is to remain open but careful.”
But she noted additional restrictions — such as indoor capacity limits — could be reimposed if current trends continue. She cited some parts of the country that are already seeing more serious resurgences that are pushing hospitals to their limits and vowed not to let that happen here. She also said the city has no current plans to require restaurant patrons to be vaccinated against COVID-19 but is watching places like New York City that are trying the measure.
“Four hundred cases per day is concerning,” in part because it raises the chances of exposure for anyone venturing out in the city, Arwady said of Chicago passing that benchmark for average new daily cases. But she noted that, in the first peak of the pandemic last winter, average daily cases topped 2,000 in Chicago.
“In terms of where we’ve been, as a city, it is not a cause for alarm,” Arwady said about the caseload. “It is a cause for caution. The main message is that people who are unvaccinated are at higher risk.”
Just hours before Chicago’s public health department announced the new indoor mask mandate, Arwady said the 400-new-cases-per-day threshold will not affect the opening of Chicago Public Schools on Aug. 30.
Arwady said Tuesday that the city passing a 400-case threshold of daily COVID-19 cases — a benchmark she previously described as a “line in the sand for us” — does not affect the school district’s plan to return to in-person learning this month because there is now a vaccine.
“I want to be very clear that in no way does it change the recommendation related to being able to have school in person,” Arwady said when asked during an online question-and-answer session about where her new “line in the sand” was.
The average number of new positive COVID-19 tests in Chicago rose to 419 Monday, the highest it had been since May 7 and a tenfold increase from the rate’s lowest point in June.
Also on Tuesday, the city’s public health department added eight states and Washington, D.C., to its optional travel advisory. Newly entering the list are Minnesota, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
That brings the total to 39 states and three territories from which the city is recommending travelers who are not vaccinated quarantine for 10 days or test negative for COVID-19 within three days before arrival. States get on the list by surpassing 15 daily cases per 100,000 residents.
Mary Kay Tuzi, a second-generation co-owner of Twin Anchors Restaurant & Tavern in Old Town, said she’s not surprised by the mandate based on surging cases in Chicago and nationally, but worries battles with customers may be ahead.
While about half of Twin Anchors’ bartenders and most servers have gone back to wearing masks on the job, most customers do not, she said.
“Hopefully word gets out and we don’t have to be the people to educate everybody,” she said. “Obviously we’ll comply if that’s what the city is expecting.”
Tuzi said a renewed mask edict is preferable than being forced to check for proof of vaccination at the door.
“Having to check vaccine cards would have been a nightmare,” she said. “If this was the compromise they came up with, I’d rather do it.”
Her brother, Paul Tuzi, who is also a co-owner, said there may be some customer pushback at the bar, where people have returned to crowding in together like the pre-pandemic days. The fact that so many people are vaccinated may also add a hurdle, he said, with some customers arguing that they don’t need to wear masks because they’re vaccinated.
“I can already anticipate we’ll have arguments like that,” he said.
Marcos Carbajal, owner of Carnitas Uruapan, which has locations in Gage Park and Pilsen, said he figured this was going to happen.
“With things going in the direction they are going in, and with how transmissible the new variant is, this makes sense,” Carbajal said Tuesday afternoon. He said he feels lucky, because his whole staff is vaccinated and most of his patrons still wear masks when entering the restaurant, so enforcing this mandate won’t be that hard.
“It’s a small sacrifice to make, especially if we can avoid another round of capacity restrictions,” he said.
Carbajal added he and his staff are still trying to be as cautious as possible. Though both locations are open, the tiny Pilsen one only offers takeout. “It’s so small, it’s impossible to put more distance in there,” Carbajal said. “We don’t feel comfortable opening it yet.”
At Salon Envy in Lincoln Park, owner Susan Gardner implemented her own mask mandate two weeks ago, as concerns about increasing COVID-19 cases and the more transmissible delta variant began to hit home in Chicago.
“With everything going on and the new variants, I just want to protect the staff and the guests,” said Gardner, 51. “I don’t want anyone to have anything happen here.”
The 15-year-old salon has 10 chairs, nine stylists and about 20 people inside at any given time throughout the day. When the mandates were lifted in June, most customers abandoned their masks during their appointments, although a few stylists kept wearing them, Gardner said.
Salon Envy did not ask customers if they were vaccinated.
“Whoever wanted to be in the salon without a mask could be in without,” Gardner said.
Gardner, who stopped wearing a mask herself at work this summer, had a change of heart as masks began to resurface at grocery stores and coffee shops in the wake of the delta variant surge. She decided to make them mandatory at her salon on Aug. 3.
A sign was posted on the door and customers who didn’t have a mask received one at the front desk. Most took the salon’s mandate in stride, she said.
“We had one person who was not happy and refused to wear it,” Gardner said. “But other than that, we haven’t had any problems. People have actually been like, ‘I’m glad you guys are masking up again.’”
In defending her support for a full return to classrooms at the same time as she imposed the indoor mask mandate, Arwady said no benchmarks have changed. Surpassing the 400-case metric leads to the higher risk category for COVID-19 transmission, she noted, while breaking 200 cases had been moderate risk and resulted in an optional indoor masking recommendation regardless of vaccination status.
She also noted that the positivity rate stands at 4.3%, under the 5% moderate risk threshold. Hospitalizations and deaths remain at lower risk.
“I want to be clear that that risk is especially for people who are unvaccinated,” Arwady said. “And so, as vaccine has come into the picture, what we’ve seen is that the other indicators that we follow have actually stayed at that lower risk level.”
A year ago, Arwady said the prospect, then looming, of the city hitting 400 new cases a day would mark “a line in the sand for us, particularly around major things like planning to open one of the largest school districts in the country.”
Ultimately, CPS students began the 2020-21 school year with all remote learning, and it was only until the spring that a hybrid learning model, combining in-person and remote classes, took effect following negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union.
But this fall, nearly all CPS students will be learning in-person full-time, a far cry from last year, when only about a quarter of students returned for any in-persosn classes.
Arwady said last August’s decision to start the school year remote was a “conservative” one because “we were still learning a lot about COVID.”
State officials on Tuesday reported 3,639 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, bringing the average number of new daily cases over the past week to 3,327.
That’s the highest level since the week ending April 15. During the state’s spring surge, the seven-day average of new cases peaked at 3,390 during the week ending April 13.
A week ago, the state was averaging 2,751 daily cases, and a month ago the average was 691 cases per day.
The statewide case positivity rate — the percentage of new cases as a share of total test — reached a seven-day average of 5.4% during the week ending Monday, a level not seen since mid-January, when the massive fall surge was still subsiding,
Hospital beds also continue to fill up with COVID-19 patients, with 1,952 hospitalized as of Monday night for an average of 1,727 per day over the past week. That’s the highest level since mid-May.
The latest surge, driven by the highly contagious delta variant, appears to spurring a rise in vaccinations, with the average number of daily doses reaching 39,011 statewide during the week ending Monday. That’s up from an average of 24,965 a week earlier but still well below the more than 100,000 daily shots that were being administered during the height of the vaccination effort in April.
Nearly 61% of eligible Illinois residents have been fully vaccinated, according to the state Department of Public Health.
The state reported 17 additional fatalities Tuesday, pushing the average number of daily deaths over the past week to 14, up from an average of 12 per day a week earlier.
In all, the state has recorded 23,640 coronavirus deaths since the pandemic began.
