Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday unveiled what she called a “Protecting Chicago framework” to guide the slow, but steady reopening of a city economy ground to a halt by the coronavirus.
Like Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s plan to reopen Illinois, the mayor’s version has five phases with Chicago currently stuck in a Phase 2 that requires all but essential workers to stay home as much as possible.
Lightfoot is also following the governor’s lead in establishing four health-related questions that will determine when and how Chicago graduates to the next phase.
They are whether the rate of transmission of the novel coronavirus across Chicago and surrounding counties is decreasing; whether the city has enough testing and contact-tracing capacity to track the disease and limit its spread; whether there are enough “support systems” in place to protect “vulnerable” Chicagoans, and whether the health care system has capacity to handle a “potential future surge.”
Unlike the governor’s plan, in order to “cautiously reopen,” Lightfoot has established a set of so-called “epidemiological factors” to determine whether the city can move to Phase 3 and future phases by measuring every 14 days — not every 28 days as Pritzker has proposed.
“The 14 days the, kind of gestation period from the time of symptoms with COVID to when, typically, it runs it course in an individual. That’s the guidance that’s been followed for some time now. It’s certainly consistent with the CDC guidance. And we think that makes sense,” Lightfoot said.
The mayor noted that “in the arc of” the coronavirus, “28 days is a very long time.” Does that mean Pritzker is moving too slowly between phases?
“I can’t say that he’s moving too slowly. We’re both — as are all leaders across the state and the country — trying to make sure that we’re guided by the science and the data and really letting that dictate how and when we move,” the mayor said.
“Everybody is anxious to get back to some semblance of normalcy. … As the days get longer and the sun is shining brightly, there’s an anxiousness that comes in all of us ... to get back outside and enjoy Chicago in all of its splendor in the warm weather. I certainly understand that. But we’re not at a point yet where we feel like we can just pretend that the last eight weeks haven’t happened. I know that, if we did that, it would result in fairly catastrophic results.”
At the height of the pandemic, Chicago cases were doubling every two or three days. Now, it’s every 15 or 16 days. But the number of coronavirus cases is still increasing, she said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet. … We want to make sure that the hospital system is stable and that we have plenty of room in the event that there’s a surge. We’ve got to focus on testing capacity and building that up. We’re now averaging about 3,000 tests per day in Chicago. We need to get that up to a much higher level,” she said.
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Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia has urged Pritzker to relax his five-step plan to allow restaurants to open at 25% capacity on June 1 with strict safeguards for restaurant employees, including face masks, mandatory temperature checks and at least 6 feet between tables.
Lightfoot said she shares Toia’s concern about restaurants going out of business, damaging the “social fabric” of Chicago. But she stopped short of embracing Toia’s proposed opening date.
Instead, she plans to release “specific industry guidelines” in the coming weeks that, a top mayoral aide said, would be “like a playbook for different industries” on how to safely reopen.
“We’re not at a point yet, in our discussions or really in the arc of this pandemic, where we can really lay down hard and fast rules by any sector,” she said, nothing that she appointed a Recovery Task Force to help guide those decisions. “To get that information, think about what best practices should be and then work with sector leaders to come up with plans that make sense, based upon the data, based upon the kind of business type,” she said.
“Even within the restaurant industry, there’s a variety of different restaurants. There’s a walk-up hot dog stand. There’s a big, formal, sit-down restaurant. There’s restaurants that have family tables. It’s not one size fits all. And we have to make sure that we are in very close contact and dialogue with them, as we have been, before we make any decisions about opening.”
