Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot sounded the alarm on the continuing COVID-19 pandemic Tuesday, saying the city has to quash recent case increases or face the prospect of her reinstating public health restrictions.
“All across the United States there have been increases in COVID-19 cases, including in central and southern Illinois, and right here in Chicago,” Lightfoot said.
Chicago also added Florida, Louisiana, Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands to its COVID-19 travel advisory Tuesday. City Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady urged people to reconsider traveling to those states.
Average daily new cases in Chicago are up to 90, after dipping to 34 per day last month, the mayor said at a City Hall news conference.
“If we allow the virus to linger here in Chicago, we will likely see further mutations, some of which our current vaccines may not be able to protect against, and have to reinforce some of the restrictions that infamously defined 2020 and part of 2021,” she said.
“This is a reality we can avoid, and it’s preventable,” the mayor said, calling for people to get vaccinated, particularly in neighborhoods on the South and West sides seeing virus spikes. She cited the 60621 and 60633 zip codes as specifically.
The mayor also expressed concern about Lollapalooza coming up on July 29 to Aug. 1 in Grant Park, where huge crowds will gather for the giant music festival.
Lightfoot has been eager to showcase Chicago as a big city that’s able to handle fewer restrictions. She moved the city’s full reopening up to June 11, removing capacity restrictions at restaurants and other businesses, and allowing the Cubs and White Sox to again fill their ballparks with fans.
While the mayor has throughout the pandemic warned she would not hesitate to reinstate tougher public safety guidelines, doing so during the summer after fully reopening would be a serious blow to residents’ psyche. Lightfoot would risk a serious backlash from Chicagoans who are just getting back to some semblance of normalcy, and could face a mutiny from business owners who were starved for customers for over a year before the city reopened.
There have been clear signs of recent trouble, however.
Last week, the city added Missouri and Arkansas back to Chicago’s emergency travel advisory amid rising COVID-19 numbers in those states thanks to the Delta variant, breaking a several-week streak of no travel advisories. Unvaccinated travelers returning to Chicago from places under the advisory are asked to abide by quarantine or COVID-19 test requirements.
Since the start of June, no states had been on the city’s COVID-19 travel advisory as the pandemic appeared to ebb in the U.S. thanks to vaccinations. But as the more contagious delta variant began spreading and states hit a wall with vaccine outreach, positive tests began creeping up once again.