Northwest Illinois Region 1 Placed On Tighter COVID Mitigations

ST CLAIR COUNTY, IL — Starting Sunday, Oct. 25, public health officials announced addition COVID-19 mitigations for Northwest Illinois’s Region 1 after the region’s positivity rate has remained the highest in the state.

Region 1, which includes Rockford and the counties of Boone, Carroll, DeKalb, Jo Daviess, Lee, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside and Winnebago, reported an 11.9 percent rolling positivity rate on Thursday.

Northwest Illinois has been under Tier 1 of the state’s resurgence mitigation plan since Oct. 3, after it saw a 7-day rolling average test positivity rate of 8 percent or above for three consecutive days.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday during his daily COVID-19 news briefing, that Region 1’s positivity has increased by nearly two point since Oct. 14 alone, to 11.9 percent.

“We’ve said all along that if things don’t start to turn around after two weeks in Tier 1, we can add more stringent measures to help usher in the progress we need to see to get things more open again,” Pritzker said. Pritzker. “Region 1, bordering Wisconsin and Iowa, carries the additional responsibility of navigating a situation where the massive surge of cases in our neighboring states will continue to have a spillover effect.”

The additional mitigations include capping the party size in bars and restaurants from 10 to 6 per table, and capping maximum indoor and outdoor gatherings, such as professional, religious, cultural and social groups, at 10. These new measures do not apply to schools or polling places.

Overall, the governor cautioned that the entire state of Illinois is headed for a peak in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks that would exceed that in March and April if people don't take steps to protect themselves.