But details of the guidelines had yet to be released early Friday morning.
“I am speaking frankly with our friends in the Department of Public Health about the guidelines to be issued tomorrow. I have no comment on the details today,” Preckwinkle said during a conference call.
RELATED: Latest Illinois COVID-19 Updates
Cook County is also identified as Region 10 on the Illinois Department of Public Health website that tracks COVID-19 metrics. Until Thursday, positivity rates continued to rise in Region 10, prompting concern and guidelines expected to take effect this weekend.
Cook County health officials will only say that the stricter guidelines will be similar to those in Chicago, where there have been more restrictions on bars, restaurants and gyms.
“It would be fair to say that I think we are looking at some of those, some of those same measures,” said Demian Christiansen, director of communicable disease control and prevention for Cook County. “Obviously we don’t want it to spiral out of control, as we’ve seen in other areas. We definitely want to put as much control as possible into this.”
Niles restaurant owner Randy Famacion has just rehired his staff after COVID-19 restrictions forced him to cut back. Now he is back in unknown waters.
“And now, it’s like we’re in limbo. So we don’t know what to do,” he said. “It’s scary again. It hurts financially. It hurts especially with our employees and it hurts our business.”
Region 10 stretches from Glencoe and Northbrook to the north, to the south to Richton Park and Chicago Heights.
As of Thursday, the Cook County positivity rate is 5.6%, and it has increased for nine straight days. Hospital admissions have also increased for four days in a row. If hospital admissions continue to rise in the next three days, it could trigger state action.
“Cook County and the city of Chicago have a serious problem,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “I mean, look, each region has increasing positivity rates and increasing cases. This is very problematic. It is not something we would like to see happen, but it means that we are going to have to carefully analyze what we should do. What mitigations now we need to get back on track in the direction we were going, which was reducing those positivity rates. “
Cook County health officials plan to announce the stricter guidelines on Friday and have them in place over the weekend.
Health officials say they don’t want another pleasant weekend to be spent with young people socializing and the possibility of COVID-19 cases increasing.
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