Pritzker Stands Ground On Chicago Mitigations, Lightfoot Fears For Business

Although Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot worries that barring restaurants from indoor dining service will be a further hit to the city’s economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is standing his ground.

Pritzker announced Tuesday (October 27) that “resurgence mitigations” are slated to take effect in Region 11 — which includes Chicago — this Friday (October 30). Restrictions include eliminating indoor service at bars and restaurants, closing bars and restaurants at 11 p.m. and others.

This comes at a time that Lightfoot, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady and others have said that Chicago is headed into the “second surge” of COVID-19.

It also comes at a time that restaurants have been striving to find ways to keep outdoor dining available during winter months to keep customers safe from COVID-19.

“If the governor’s order goes into effect, it’s really effectively shutting down a significant portion of our economy,” Lightfoot said to PBS.

Still, Pritzker is planning to move forward.

“The same mitigations that went in place for other areas of the state that have tripped those metrics, where we’ve got people getting sick and going into the hospital — places like, Will County and in Kankakee, all the collar counties and many of the regions downstate — we’ve imposed the same sets of metrics and startup mitigations, and we’ll be doing that for the city of Chicago,” he said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re both dedicated to the same thing, which is we want to keep people safe and healthy, and we want to keep the economy going while this virus is ravaging so many people.”

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