Illinois officials are urging patience when the next phase of the massive COVID-19 vaccination effort launches Monday because while about a quarter of the state’s population will be eligible to be immunized, the vaccine supply remains severely limited and appointments will be hard to come by.
People 65 and older, teachers, first responders, grocery store workers and others deemed “essential workers,” a group that totals more than 3 million people, will all be eligible for a shot.
But the state has received less than a million doses since the effort began in mid-December, and just 126,000 doses outside of Chicago are expected to be delivered to the state next week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at his weekly coronavirus briefing.
“There will be far greater demand than supply for at least the near term,” Pritzker said, while promising appointments will be easier to come by as shipments increase.
The state prepared for the rollout of the next phase of vaccinations while also rolling back restrictions in some parts of the state, with limited indoor dining on track to resume in Chicago and suburban Cook County on Saturday.
With two shots needed to reap the full coverage against COVID-19 from available vaccines, it’s unclear how long it will take to get to the next group eligible under federal guidelines, which includes people with medical conditions that put them at risk, much less to those who aren’t given priority because of their job or coronavirus vulnerability.
Illinois began vaccinating front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities in mid-December. “Nearly all” health care workers included in the first phase have now had the opportunity to get vaccinated, Pritzker said on Friday.
The next group of eligible recipients can make appointments starting Monday through Illinois National Guard-staffed vaccination sites, local health departments and pharmacies.
Walgreens, CVS and Jewel-Osco locations are among those that will begin taking appointments Monday, with Mariano’s, Hy-Vee and Kroger pharmacies doing the same by Feb. 1, Pritzker said.
While state officials emphasized the need for appointments to receive a vaccination, some downstate counties have announced that drive-thru clinics are offering shots to those eligible in phases 1a and 1b on a first-come, first-served basis.
And though the state considers Monday to be the official start to the next phase, some counties and health systems that had largely gotten through the first phase of vaccinations had already moved on to phase 1b shots.
The state is launching a new website, which will be available through coronavirus.illinois.gov once the next phase is underway, to provide information about making appointments, Pritzker said.
“When we have a steady stream of vaccine coming in from the federal government, we will launch walk-in locations and around-the-clock operations,” Pritzker said.
The state’s top public health official, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, said the Illinois Department of Public Health has made it clear that those who are administering the coronavirus vaccine must follow the state-set rules for eligibility, and not allow influential individuals to jump the line.
“We’ve worked really hard to make sure that we’re not making exceptions just based on requests from other individuals,” Ezike said.
“Does IDPH have the ability to look at every place that vaccines are administered to make sure that no one was inappropriately given a vaccine? No, but we are collecting as much data as we can and we are asking that people certify which group they actually belong to,” she said.
The Democratic governor continued to criticize the federal coronavirus response under former Republican President Donald Trump, and lauded President Joe Biden’s response plans in the first days of his administration.
Pritzker said he has “made clear” to the Illinois congressional delegation that federal lawmakers should immediately take up legislation that would devote billions of dollars to expanding vaccination centers and mobile clinics.
Pritzker said he was “troubled” to see the slow pace at which a federal partnership program with pharmacies was vaccinating residents of long-term care facilities, who are considered among the most vulnerable because of their age, underlying health conditions and because they live in a congregate care setting.
The federal government has set aside 524,050 doses of Illinois’ vaccine allotment for that program, but only 93,683 of those shots have been administered, Pritzker said.
As of Thursday night, 922,325 doses of vaccine had been delivered to Illinois, a number that includes what Chicago, which gets its own shipments, has received.
The metrics the state uses to determine restrictions continue to be moving in the right direction. As of Friday, all 11 regions of the state as defined by Pritzker’s reopening plan have emerged from stricter rules put in place statewide in November, when Illinois saw an aggressive fall resurgence of COVID-19.
Chicago and suburban Cook County are poised to have limited indoor restaurant and bar service resume Saturday if current trends hold. That would allow bars and restaurants to reopen at 25% capacity or 25 people, whichever is less.
Among other loosened rules, gyms and fitness centers could reopen with 50% capacity limits and other public health precautions in place.
To qualify for eased restrictions, each of the 11 regions in Pritzker’s plan must meet bench marks based on coronavirus positivity rates, available beds in intensive care units and hospital admissions for COVID-19.
Particularly with the presence in the state of a more contagious variant of COVID-19, the loosened restrictions “could be cut short, if we aren’t extremely careful,” Pritzker said.
“We continue to live in a perilous moment,” Pritzker said. “Look around the nation, outside of Illinois, and you’ll see the pandemic at its worst, in many places. The risk of a resurgence in Illinois, particularly with extremely contagious new variants, is serious.”
Will and Kankakee counties saw limited indoor dining resume Thursday, but the prohibition, which has been widely flouted, remains in effect in the rest of the collar counties.
The Metro East region outside of St. Louis joins the regions comprising Chicago, suburban Cook County, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties in seeing capacity limits on retail stores raised to 50% from 25%, among other changes.
Pritzker’s administration on Friday also released updated guidance on youth sports that sets different levels of allowable play based on the restrictions a region is under, and separates sports into different risk tiers depending on how much contact and how closely athletes are to one another during play.
The state reported 7,042 newly confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 Friday, which public health officials called an “artificial” increase because an adjustment was made to how the state reports probable cases. Over the past three days, the statewide new and probable coronavirus case tally fell between 4,000 and 5,000.
The state also reported another 95 deaths on Friday, raising the statewide death toll to 18,615. There have been 1,093,375 known cases of COVID-19 in Illinois throughout the course of the pandemic.
The new cases reported Friday came out of a batch of 125,831 tests conducted over the previous 24 hours. As of Thursday night, 3,179 people across the state were hospitalized with COVID-19 with 661 patients in intensive care units and 348 on ventilators.
Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella contributed.