Cook County Opts Out Of State's Plan To Expand Phase 1b Group

COOK COUNTY, IL — With about one in 10 Cook County residents eligible for coronavirus vaccines having received one, Chicago and suburban Cook County officials announced it was too soon to expand the Phase 1b priority group.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle rejected the decision announced Wednesday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to begin including in Phase 1b everyone with underlying health conditions — even those who are not essential workers or aged 65 or older.

"While other parts of the state may be ready to move into the next phase, Chicago and Cook County are not," Preckwinkle said Thursday.

Speaking at the opening of a new mass vaccination site in South Holland, the board president said she shared the community's frustration with the lack of vaccine supplies.

"Expansion to a larger group at this time is simply not fair to those who were prioritized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," Preckwinkle said. "At this time we simply can't even predict when we will be able to move beyond those 65 and older and essential front-line staff."

Suburban Cook County has vaccinated about 63,500 of the county's estimated 600,000 seniors and front-line essential workers already included in Phase 1b.

While Pritzker said the state's vaccine allocations were scheduled to increase by 5 percent this week, the county board president said she will believe it when she sees it.

The county has already had to shut down vaccination sites after exhausting supplies, Preckwinkle said, and systems to book appointment are already overloaded.

"The volume and consistency of vaccines has been a real problem at the local level," she said. "So unless and until we have vaccine in hand, we're not going to make appointments for people when we can't meet those commitments."

The governor's office said the eligibility expansion is planned for Feb. 25, one day before the FDA is scheduled to review approval of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by Johnson & Johnson that requires only one dose.

Local health departments who have "substantially completed" local Phase 1b populations may be able to expand it even earlier, according to a statement from the governor's office.

“As quickly as we receive enough vaccine supply, we need to waste no time in protecting a broader section of our most vulnerable population,” Pritzker said.

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At a news conference Wednesday, Pritzker said the state was aware of the next three weeks of vaccine allocations from the federal government, but a spokesperson for the governor has not responded to repeated requests for that number.

State officials are notified every Tuesday through a software platform called Tiberius — named after the middle name of fictional spaceship Captain James T. Kirk from "Star Trek."

Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Alison Arwady said adding additional people to Phase 1b would only make it more difficult for seniors and front-line workers currently eligible.

"It would make it harder for us to get to the people over 65 and make it harder to get it in the hardest hit communities because it just dilutes the amount available," Arwady said.

She said the city's 6,000 doses a day of vaccine was insufficient to handle the additional over 900,000 Chicago residents who would be included in the expansion.

Outside of Chicago, the Cook County Department of Public Health has jurisdiction over all of suburban Cook County except for Evanston, Oak Park, Skokie and Stickney Township. Oak Park officials expect to begin expanding preregistration to include the newly eligible population after Feb. 25. Evanston city officials, who have not yet begun vaccinating all phase 1b essential workers or anyone under age 75, do not expect to be able to expand Phase 1b by Feb. 25. Skokie village officials said there was no decision yet available to announce.

"We will have some more conversations certainly with the state. If they have gotten some assurance and there will be some additional vaccine and they can direct it toward Chicago, that would be very helpful in terms of being able to move more quickly ahead," Arwady said Wednesday.

"But I want to be really careful about not opening up the number of people eligible for vaccine when I don’t have anywhere near enough vaccine. "