Mayor Lightfoot is moving at double the speed as Pritzker

Here’s how Mayor Lori Lightfoot hopes to reopen Chicago ASAP

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is following the governor’s lead in establishing four health-related questions that will determine when and how Chicago graduates to the next phase.

 Chris Sweda-Pool via Getty Images

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday unveiled, what she called a “Protecting Chicago framework” to guide the slow, but steady reopening of a city economy ground to

a halt by the coronavirus.

Like Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s plan to reopen Illinois, the mayor’s version has five phases with Chicago currently stuck in a Phase 2 that requires all but essential workers to stay home as much as possible. 

Lightfoot is also following the governor’s lead in establishing four health-related questions that will determine when and how Chicago graduates to the next phase.

They are: whether the rate of transmission of the novel coronavirus across Chicago and surrounding counties is decreasing; whether the city has enough testing and contact-tracing capacity to track the disease and limit its spread; whether there are enough “support systems” in place to protect “vulnerable” Chicagoans; and whether the health care system has capacity to handle a “potential future surge.”

But unlike the governor’s plan, in order to “cautiously reopen” Lightfoot has established a set of so-called “epidemiological factors” to determine whether the city can move to Phase 3 and future phases by measuring every 14 days — not every 28 days as Pritzker has proposed. 

“The 14 days the, kind of gestation period from the time of symptoms with COVID to when, typically, it runs it course in an individual. That’s the guidance that’s been followed for some time now. It’s certainly consistent with the CDC guidance. And we think that makes sense,”

The mayor noted that, “in the arc of” the coronavirus, “28 days is a very long time.” Does that mean Pritzker is moving too slowly between phases?

“I can’t say that he’s moving too slowly. We’re both — as are all leaders across the state and the country — trying to make sure that we’re guided by the science and the data and really letting that dictate how and when we move,” the mayor said.