Is Illinois going to open up more of the economy over the next few weeks?
Leaders of the convention and hotel industry would like to see more people allowed in ballrooms and at conferences.
Governor JB Pritzker says he knows that some people want things to open more quickly but COVID-19 is still a problem. With new variants moving around the state, he still wants to listen medical experts as to when is the right time to open.
“To those who have conventions and banquets and other things more, I’m looking at all that and the doctors are looking at all of that. We are trying to measure how much progress are we making on vaccines and how well we are doing on the numbers and trying to judge that against the speed of which we might see some surge of cases.”
Pritzker says with the state positivity rate under three it’s a great time to continue to keep people healthy as the work begins on expanding possible crowd sizes.
The Illinois Department of Public Health on Monday did agree to allow Illinois High School Association sports to have fans for outdoor events up to 20-percent capacity instead of the current limit of 50 people.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Monday allowed Chicago’s two major league baseball teams to also have 20-percent capacity at their stadiums. That means about 8,100 fans will be allowed into each White Sox game and 8,300 to each cubs game.
Fans weren’t allowed at any of the stadiums last season.
