Arwady said the city will put up its first mass vaccination site next week, which will allow for health care workers to be more rapidly vaccinated.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who visited Illinois Tuesday to examine the state s vaccine rollout, said he hopes to have half the adult population nationwide vaccinated by the end of February.
Based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care workers and long term care facility residents are in the 1A group, or of the first people to receive the COVID-19 vaccine statewide.
According to the Illinois Department of Public Health website, the following groups of individuals will be prioritized in the initial phases of the vaccine rollout:
Details on what the governor plans to discuss weren t immediately released.
The remarks come just one day after U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams joined Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike and Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady to discuss the city and state s vaccine rollout plans.
During a press conference after visiting a Chicago hospital, which he said had reached capacity in its intensive care unit due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, Adams issued a blunt holiday warning. Even if you don t personally feel at risk from COVID, your actions still can have an impact on you, your family and your community in other ways that you might not think of, he said after a visit to Saint Anthony s Hospital. That full ICU, it s full because there are COVID patients pushing it over the top. But that means if you have a heart attack, there might not be room in the end. It means if you get in a car wreck on icy road, they may
Even if you weren t doing the safest thing that we recommend and keeping it within your household, things such as quarantining yourself now - because every person you interact with now is a person whose bubble has now infiltrated your bubble and potential for you to take virus home to someone this Christmas - things like making sure you ve got plenty of ventilation in your home environment, and making sure you ve got plenty of hand sanitizer and that people are practicing good hand hygiene, Adams said. Again, we want you to be as safe as possible. But if you can t keep it within your household, we still want you to think about how you can have a safer holiday season. I want you to have hope because a lot of people are fatigued. A lot of people are asking when this is going to end and I want you to know that I m actually incredibly optimistic based on these two vaccines now being available, that that we do have a finish line in sight.
Church Pleads For Toy Donations as Demand Surges Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
Rev. William Melvin Jones, pastor at Sanctuary Church in Chicago, said volunteers have been working around the clock to bring Christmas to children across the city. We are going to be here all night long, Jones said.
For more than 24 years, the Chicago Toy Depository at Sanctuary Church has been answering Christmas letters from children, preparing toys and filling stockings for typical several hundred families.
This year, however, the church received more than 1,000 requests for toys and food in light of the financial struggles people are facing during the coronavirus pandemic. In a message Wednesday, the Chicago Toy Depository said they are still in desperate need of 800 toys.