Gov. J.B. Pritzker has issued a “stay-at-home” order for the entire state starting at 5 p.m. Saturday through at least April 7, marking Illinois’ most aggressive step yet to try to slow the coronavirus’s spread.
A dramatic-sounding move, to be sure, but one that largely codifies the previous recommendations and rules issued by state officials. Pritzker said his latest decision was based on conversations with “some of the best medical experts, epidemiologists, mathematicians and modelers.”
He announced the change on Friday afternoon, as Illinois reached 585 confirmed cases across 25 counties, including 163 new cases. The death toll has risen to five, as officials announced a Cook County woman in her 70s had died from COVID-19.
“I’ve asked every one of these experts, ‘What action can I take to save the most lives?'” the governor said. “Well, they’ve come back to me with one inescapable conclusion: To avoid the loss of potentially tens of thousands of lives, we must enact an immediate stay-at-home order for the state of Illinois.”
The directive prohibits any gathering larger than 10 people, in keeping with the latest recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also bars residents from socializing in-person with people outside their household, meaning even small parties and casual get-togethers should not take place.
Playgrounds will be closed, though each community will decide whether green space will remain open for recreational use. Illinois has shut down its state parks. All Chicago Park District facilities will be closed, but people can still enjoy the open spaces as long as they maintain a social distance of 6 feet.
“How can soccer or book club be so dangerous? Why ask so much of people for just a few hundred cases?” said Dr. Emily Landon, medical director of antimicrobial stewardship and infection control at University of Chicago Medicine. “Because it’s the only way to save those lives. And now is the time, because the numbers you see today in the news are by the people that got sick a week ago, and there are still people who got sick today and haven’t even noticed that they got sick yet.”
Residents can still go to grocery stores, put gas in their cars, take walks outside and make pharmacy runs. All local roads and airports remain open, with interstate travel expressly permitted. Illinoisans can leave home to help care for relatives, elderly residents or other vulnerable people.
Grabbing takeout, ordering an Uber and dropping off dry cleaning also are still permitted. The order even allows liquor stores and recreational cannabis dispensaries to remain open for business should the second week of impromptu homeschooling create an essential need.
Pritzker’s order includes a long list of vital occupations that can stay on the job: health care workers, grocery employees, funeral home employees, pharmacists, hardware store workers, plumbers, electricians, day care providers, bank tellers and roles that are essential to the supply chain. Police, firefighters and paramedics also can keep working.
In short, most residents who have been able to work from home, maintain a social distance and repeatedly wash their hands will have no problem adjusting to the governor’s latest directive.
“For the vast majority of you already taking precautions, your lives will not change very much,” said Pritzker, whose order also halts evictions for as long as it is in place.
The governor also pushed back the reopening date for schools statewide until at least April 8. Chicago Public Schools will not start again until April 21.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who voiced her support for the “stay-at-home” order, announced Chicago Public Libraries will close at 5 p.m Saturday. The CTA will remain in operation, though people are encouraged to socially distance themselves from other riders.
“This is not a lockdown or martial law,” Lightfoot said.
Pritzker acknowledged the state doesn’t have “the resources, the capacity or the desire” to police every individual’s behavior. Instead, he said, officials will rely on Illinoisans to be good citizens and do right by their communities.
In Chicago, police officers will be instructed to keep an eye out for groups of 10 or more people, then find out if the violators have a vital reason for congregating. The objective is to educate the public about the governor’s order, not punish people for disobeying it, department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
“Our very, very firm position here is this is a public health issue,” he said. “This is not a quarantine. And the spirit of law is different than the letter of the law. People can expect to be reminded of the governor’s order, (to have officers) asking them to create social distance, disperse the area in some cases. … Arrest is only a very, very last resort because this is not intended to be a criminal order.”
Though the governor has activated the Illinois National Guard to help combat the virus, the service members will have no role in enforcing any potential order. Pritzker said irresponsible social media users, as well as Russian and Chinese meddlers, spread unfounded rumors about the Guard being deployed to enforce a quarantine.
In reality, 60 service members will be used to establish drive-up testing sites, help with food delivery to disadvantaged families impacted by school closures and possibly prepare closed hospitals to reopen. The vast majority of currently activated troops are health care professionals — doctors, nurses, medical technicians — who would not be tapped for a law-enforcement assignment.
“We have never even discussed a quarantine mission for the Illinois National Guard,” Lt. Col. Bradford Leighton told the Tribune. “It’s never come up.”
Illinois joins California, New York and Connecticut in ordering residents to stay home, meaning the country’s three largest cities — New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago — will be essentially shuttered in an attempt to blunt COVID-19’s reach.
Oak Park spent its first day under such conditions Friday. The suburb’s unofficial lockdown did not look very different from a typical weekday afternoon. On the streets in the eastern third of town, a handful of people were out walking their dogs or jogging.
The artificial turf soccer field at Ridgeland Common had a father and son at one end, a handful of teenage boys at the other playing soccer on a goal that was still up. One woman and her two dogs were in the small dog park at the field’s south end.
A visible difference was evident at Pete’s Fresh Market, where the parking lot was about 90% full, ordinary for a Sunday evening but exceptional for a midday Friday. Whole Foods also had a security guard posted at the door, ensuring that no more than 40 people were inside at any given time.
That lack of a sharp dividing line is what residents observed as well.
“My family and I took it very seriously from the get-go, so it really doesn’t look a whole lot different to us,” said Molly Monaco, 37, who works in technology sales and has been on maternity leave since January. “We have four grandparents close by. Starting Sunday, we decided it would be best if we kept the kids separate from their grandparents. We’re using FaceTime.”
Monaco’s message for Illinoisans wondering what it’ll be like with a statewide stay-at-home order? “Keep to your immediate family. The stricter you are, the faster it’ll be for everybody, hopefully. I just hope everyone is listening because, honestly, the people that aren’t listening are just going to make it longer for everybody else and themselves,” she said.
Indeed, Landon, the epidemiologist who has been consulting with the governor, said history suggests a stay-at-home order could be the most effective tool in fighting the virus’s spread. At the beginning of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, St. Louis shut down with a “shelter-in-place” order, while Philadelphia hosted a parade to celebrate soldiers coming home from war.
A week later, Philadelphia’s hospitals were overrun with patients, and thousands died. St. Louis fared far better.
“This is a cautionary tale for our time. Things are already tough in Illinois hospitals, including mine. There’s no vaccine or readily available anti-viral to help the stem the tide. All we have to slow the spread is distance — social distance,” she said. “If we let every single patient with this infection infect three more people, and then each of them infect two or three more people, there won’t be a hospital bed when my mother can’t breathe very well, or when yours is coughing too much.”
Pritzker’s decision was applauded by several pro-business groups, including organizations representing retailers and manufacturers. It also had the support of Lightfoot and DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin, both of whom stood beside him as he announced the decision.
Some Illinois residents also said they understood the order, even as it threatened to make their lives more challenging.
“I’m glad he is calling for a shutdown in movement,” South Shore resident Shirley Rollins. “Everyone has to sacrifice, things are getting too out of control. As long as I can get food and my medicine, I’m good.”
Still, the governor said he did not make the decision easily. He had been weighing the order for days, sources told the Tribune, as he tried to balance the needs of Illinois’ economy and the public’s safety.
Even as he announced the order Friday, he acknowledged it could extend beyond early April, meaning businesses deemed nonessential would suffer even greater losses. The Illinois Chamber of Commerce already has called on the governor to ease the economic hardship the order will create for local businesses.
“I fully recognize, in some cases, I am choosing between saving people’s lives and saving people’s livelihoods,” Pritzker said. “But ultimately you can’t have a livelihood if you don’t have your life.”
Now everyone has a chance to help save lives — even if it won’t seem that way.
“It’s really hard to feel like you’re saving the world when you’re watching Netflix from your couch,” Landon said. “But if we do this right, nothing happens. A successful shelter in place means you’re going to feel like it was all for nothing.”
Chicago Tribune’s Jamie Munks, Javonte Anderson, Annie Sweeney, Deanese Williams-Harris, John Byrne and Antonia Ayres-Brown contributed.
