3 years, 9 months ago by Scott Hardy
Seen as victory for local government, who asked for similar zones in April
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has announced a new COVID-19 mitigation plan that grants a wish of local leaders.
The plan, announced Wednesday, will divide the state into 11 regions, based on the Emergency Medical Services regions used by the Illinois Department of Public Health. It had been four. That means West Central Illinois will have its' own region, which will also include Sangamon County in central Illinois, and several counties near the Metro-East area. It's a victory for local leaders, who have wanted smaller regions since Governor Pritzker first released his Restore Illinois plan. A statement says that the resurgence prevention plan developed by the Illinois Department of Public Health outlines three tiers of general and industry-specific mitigations that the state can use to prevent a renewed spread of the virus. Those mitigations will go into effect if a region has a sustained increase in a 7-day rolling average in the positivity rate. There will also be severity indicators used, such as a sustained 7-day increase in hospital admissions for a COVID-19 like illness, a reduction in hospital bed capacity to under 20 per cent, or if a region has three straight days of an 8 per cent or higher positivity rate.
A full list of the three tiers of mitigations is available below.
