With hospital staffing on the increase, the Illinois Department of Public Health is starting to open back up again. Regions 8,9,10, and 11 will move from Tier 3 to Tier 2. Regions 1 and 6 will move to Tier 1, and Regions 3 and 5 will return to Phase 4 of the Restore Illinois Plan.
Hospital leaders and local health departments have been working with IDPH to bring in additional staffing and add staffing contracts to address shortages from battling COVID-19. IDPH feels that mitigation tiers will allow more regions to advance as healthcare workers feel more in control if hospital numbers do in fact start to rise again.
In order to move to phase 4 a region must have a test positivity rate less than 6.5% for three consecutive days, a 20% available staffed ICU hospital beds for 3 days, and no sustained increase in the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 for 7 out of 10 days.
Under phase 4, bars and restaurants can open with limited capacity, theaters can open with limited capacity, gatherings of up to 50 people are allowed, and all outdoor recreation is allowed. The next phase for Region 3 would be phase 5 which would be completely opening everything.
Region 6 which is in tier 1 allows all the things as phase 1 except for only 25% capacity for restaurants and indoor service is suspended if there is no food served. Gatherings can only be 25 people or less.
