COVID-19 tiers of relief
State hospital hiring initiative alters metrics, allows more regions to ease restrictions
Li’l Porgy’s in Champaign is one of many restaurants in eastern Illinois cleared for indoor dining. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
A state hiring initiative at hospitals has altered the metrics for coronavirus restrictions across most of Illinois, allowing regions to ease mitigation measures and some to resume indoor dining.
Region 3, western Illinois including Springfield and Quincy, and Region 5, southern Illinois including Carbondale and Merion, have both returned to Phase 4 in the plan to Restore Illinois. In addition to permitting schools and restaurants to open, along with outdoor recreation, it allows gatherings of up to 50 people. It’s the last phase before Phase 5, removing all COVID-19 mitigations.
As of Monday, Region 1, northwest Illinois including Rockford and Galena, and Region 6, eastern Illinois including Champaign-Urbana and Danville, joined Region 2, west-central Illinois including the Quad Cities and Bloomington-Normal, in moving to Tier 1 mitigations, allowing indoor service at bars and restaurants, albeit at reduced capacity.
Chicago, Cook County, and the north and west collar counties moved to Tier 2, easing some restrictions but maintaining a ban on indoor service. Only Region 4, Metro East, and Region 7, Will and Kankakee counties, remained under the strict Tier 3 mitigations imposed statewide just before Thanksgiving.
The Illinois Department of Public Health credited a state hiring initiative in boosting staff at hospitals, altering statistics on available bed capacity. A news release stated: “With this surge staffing program, IDPH and hospital leaders feel confident that metrics can safely move away from utilizing medical/surgical bed limits to move across mitigation tiers, allowing more regions to advance. The adjustment also recognizes the substantial progress the state has made since Nov. 20, 2020, when Tier 3 mitigations were put in place.”
“Hospital leaders have made clear the importance of staffing in their continued response to this pandemic and conveyed that staffing contracts will be extraordinarily valuable in their ability to meet the needs of their communities,” said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike in a statement. “We are pleased to see most of our regions move out of Tier 3 mitigations with this change, and it is critical that we maintain this progress. With new variants of COVID-19 spreading, it is more important than ever to follow the public health guidance that keeps people safe — wear a mask and watch your distance.”
Only Friday, the state allowed the first three regions — 1, 2, and 5, comprising northwest and north-central Illinois and southern Illinois — to move out of Tier 3 to Tier 2, permitting museums to reopen, at 25 percent of capacity, and low-risk sports and group fitness classes to resume.
The Illinois Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Healthcare and Family Services joined the Department of Public Health in launching the hospital hiring initiative. According to the news release, “The program leverages the state's larger contracting power to engage multiple staffing vendors and create access to a talent pool at greater scale than any individual hospital could achieve. Hospitals with rooms available to increase capacity but lacking the personnel to staff their beds may partner with the state to procure the staff they need. Hospitals that create orders will enter into a contract with the state to access this new staffing pool.”
Ezike said Friday that a new, more contagious strain of COVID-19, first detected in Great Britain, had been found in a Chicago patient, and she urged Illinoisans to maintain measures to deter the spread of the coronavirus. “It’s incredibly important for Illinoisans not to let their guard down,” Gov. Pritzker said. “We must remain vigilant if we are to retain our progress.”