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CHICAGO (CBS) — While COVID cases and hospitalizations are down slightly in Chicago, the city’s top doctor still wants people to only travel if it’s absolutely necessary.
Doctor Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said the grid showing what states have elevated numbers of COVID cases has gone from a three color system, from red, orange and yellow, to now a two-tier system, that as of Tuesday, has most of the United States in the orange zone. Only Hawaii is doing well with containing the number of coronavirus cases.
“Except for the state of Hawaii, which is the only state in the U.S.that arguably is in excellent control of COVID, every other state, we are advising avoiding travel,” Arwady said. “But if people travel upon return to Chicago or arrival in Chicago, they either have the choice of a 10-day quarantine or a getting a pre arrival, negative test within 72 hours and then for those 10 days in Chicago, obviously strict masking social distancing avoiding unnecessary gatherings.”
Arwady said numbers in the city have declined some, but she said that Chicago is not in a good place in terms of case numbers.
“We are currently averaging just over 1,000 new cases in Chicago residents per day, while down from the 2400, new cases per day that we were averaging in November, but well above the 400 new cases per day, which is where we’d like to be and where we were over the summer,” Arwady said. “Our goal here is the city ideally would be under 5% positivity. That’s that dashed line on the, on the chart. We’re currently at 10.3% test positivity in Chicago residents.”
Arwady said the change was made to be more in line with CDC guidance connected to travel as well as the availability of more COVID testing opportunities.
The head of the CDPH said the vaccine rollout continues, with health care workers at the head of the line to get a COVID vaccine. Arwady acknowledged that not every health care worker in the city has gotten the COVID vaccine, and it’s possible others, including essential workers, will be vaccinated soon.
As of now, more than 54,000 first COVID vaccine doses have been given with another 13,000-14,000 second doses also given. Arwady said approximately 40% of the COVID vaccines given to Chicago health care workers were given to workers who don’t live in the city.
“It’s not a problem because these are people who work in our healthcare facilities here, but they don’t show up in the Chicago data and we’re getting a lot of questions about why our numbers looking different, and I wanted to really highlight that right from the beginning,” Arwady said.
The head of the CDPH said the city is forging partnerships with pharmacies and other locations to get COVID vaccines to the public once health care workers and other essential workers have been vaccinated.
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