Illinois is no longer requiring masking in all health care facilities, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office announced Monday.
Pritzker updated an executive order, which will trigger the masking change. The action marks a milestone in the pandemic and is in line with recently released recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health care facilities have been among the last public places to still require masks, after other mask mandates were lifted in Illinois earlier this year.
But don’t expect masks in hospitals and doctors’ offices to disappear overnight. Individual health systems can still choose to require masks if they wish. Masks will still also be recommended in health care facilities in areas of high community transmission. Cook and most of its surrounding counties now have “substantial” but not high levels of community transmission, according to the CDC. DuPage County has a high level of community transmission.
Representatives of several Illinois hospital systems, including Sinai Chicago, Ascension Illinois and Rush, said Monday they have no plans, at the moment, to drop their masking requirements.
“For the safety of our vulnerable patients and associates, we continue to require masking of all patients, visitors and staff within our patient care settings,” said Dr. Rick Scott, chief clinical officer for Ascension Illinois, in a statement.
Illinois is also no longer mandating that all health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19, Pritzker’s office said Monday. A federal rule, however, still requires vaccination among health care workers in facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid, which includes nearly all health care facilities.
As part of the changes, Illinois will no longer require unvaccinated health care workers to test for COVID-19 weekly.
“Thanks to the tremendous efforts of our health care workers and residents, Illinois has done better at keeping our people safe with vaccines, boosters, and masking, which puts us in a position to continue to scale back health care requirements in line with the CDC,” Pritzker said in a news release.
He urged people to continue wearing masks and testing, however, when they have COVID-19 symptoms.
“COVID-19 is on its way to becoming endemic, like the flu, but it still poses a real threat to our immunocompromised and disabled communities,” Pritzker said. “Here in Illinois, we look out for one another — it’s what defines us as Illinoisans. Let us continue to live up to those ideals by masking up and testing when we have symptoms and getting COVID-19 booster shots — as I recently did — so that we can protect our neighbors.”
As of last week, about 10.5% of eligible Illinois residents had received new, updated COVID-19 boosters, which are designed to protect against COVID-19 broadly as well as the variants now dominant in the U.S.
