Gov. J.B. Pritzker is set to unveil his planned off-ramp from pandemic restrictions in Illinois on Wednesday as the omicron-driven COVID-19 surge continues to subside, but the requirements are expected to remain in place for schools amid an ongoing legal challenge, sources said.
Pritzker said during an appearance in Springfield on Tuesday that people looking for some indication of when his mask mandate would end should “stay tuned.”
“We’re very close,” he said, while declining to offer any specifics.
The governor is scheduled to make the announcement at a 2 p.m. news conference at the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop.
Pritzker’s move would follow announcements from Democratic counterparts on both coasts on plans to roll back mask mandates in the coming weeks.
A decision on the mask mandate that has been in place since August for all indoor public places in Illinois would also come at a pivotal time for the first-term governor.
In addition to being in the midst of a reelection campaign, Pritzker is fighting in a state appeals court to overturn a judge’s order that called into question his legal authority for requiring masks in schools.
Pritzker in recent days has pointed to COVID-19 hospitalizations as the key indicator for when it may be safe to forgo masks in public settings. Illinois is one of nine states that currently has a universal mask mandate.
On Tuesday morning, Pritzker alluded to a plan to remove the mandate to be revealed “shortly,” though he did not provide specific thresholds of when the mandate might be lifted.
“I’m pleased with the fact that we are at nearly a third of where we were when we were at our peak in terms of hospitalizations,” Pritzker said during an unrelated event in Normal. “Our hospitals are actually in much better shape now in terms of being able to manage the other people who come to a hospital.”
A day earlier, Pritzker pointed to the low point in hospitalizations last summer — when he temporarily lifted the mask mandate — when asked about a specific bench mark for removing it again.
When the requirement was rescinded June 11, the state was averaging 760 COVID-19 patients in hospitals per day, compared with an average of 3,025 during the week ending Monday. The average number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital reached an all-time high of 7,245 per day during the week ending Jan. 13.
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On Monday, the Democratic governors of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon announced plans to roll back their mask requirements for schools over the next two months. In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced masks will no longer be required for fully vaccinated people beginning Feb. 16, though the rule will remain in place for schools, hospitals and certain other settings. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday also is expected to announce the end of the state’s mandate.
Noting the change of course among Pritzker’s fellow Democrats, House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs sent the governor a letter Tuesday demanding to know what he has planned for Illinois.
“Governor, it has been a long two years, and the people of this state deserve to know what you are doing,” Durkin wrote. “Will you follow the lead of your Democratic colleagues across the nation, or will you continue to force your will on the people of Illinois, depriving them of any optimism for their future and the future of this state?”
Prtizker’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Durkin’s letter.
The moves by governors across the country are at odds with the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which continues to recommend universal masking in schools, regardless of vaccination status, and in areas the federal agency defines as having “substantial” or “high” coronavirus transmission. That still includes every county in Illinois and nearly every county in the country, according to the most recent data.
The CDC guidelines were issued during the delta variant wave last summer and haven’t been updated in response to the more recent surge driven by the omicron variant, which in general caused less severe disease.
Still, because the variant is more transmissible, the omicron surge filled hospitals with more COVID-19 patients than any previous wave of the pandemic and drove death tolls not seen since before vaccines were widely available.
During his Springfield stop Tuesday afternoon, Pritzker didn’t give a clear indication of whether any move to roll back the mask requirement for indoor public places would include schools. Last summer, he issued an order requiring masks in schools before expanding the requirement to other settings.
“It’s such a central focus of communities and, literally, sometimes thousands of people are interacting in a school in a single day in one location — parents, grandparents, teachers, staff, kids — and then they spread out in the community … not just … in the afternoon when school lets out but also on the weekends,” Pritzker said. “And so we’ve got to be very careful about how we remove those mask mandates and also making sure that the schools are doing what’s responsible.”
That includes making sure districts have coronavirus testing available and know when to consider instituting local masking requirements, he said.
Pritzker’s decision has been complicated by a Sangamon County Circuit Court judge’s Friday decision to block the state and school districts named in a set of lawsuits from enforcing the mask requirement for students and teachers named as plaintiffs in the case. The state is seeking an appellate court order reversing the lower court ruling.
The increasing pressure over masks comes as COVID-19 cases have dropped to their lowest level in more than two months.
Over the past week, the state has averaged 6,815 new confirmed and probable coronavirus cases per day, down from a record high of 32,501 daily cases during the week ending Jan. 12 and the lowest level since the week ending Dec. 5.
While cases are no longer the most reliable indicator of transmission because of the prevalence of home testing and other factors, health officials have pointed to the declining hospitalizations as a key indication that the surge is declining.
State health officials on Tuesday reported 87 deaths from COVID-19, bringing the statewide death toll to 31,570 since the pandemic began.
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed from Springfield.
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