Dupage Policy Journal

Life in Illinois has a date to return to some sense of normalcy after more than a year of COVID-19. 

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said May 6 at a news conference that businesses and other services could fully reopen by June 11 following the state's "bridge phase" slated to start May 14 will remove some restrictions and increase the capacity at most companies and social gatherings.

His long-awaited announcement has received praise from some lawmakers. 

"This is great news," Sen. John Curran (R-Lemont) briefly wrote in a May 6 Facebook post.

However, the governor cautioned that if COVID-19 cases hospitalization numbers started to increase, efforts to return to normalcy would be delayed. 

"Each day, people in Illinois and across the nation are still getting sick and being admitted to the hospital with this deadly virus," Pritzker said at the news conference, the Daily Herald reported May 7. "But there's a light that we can see at the end of the tunnel, and it's getting brighter and brighter as more people get vaccinated."

During the press conference, Pritzker and Public Health Director Ngozi Ezike also reported that more COVID-19 vaccines would be made available to primary care doctors and other medical professionals to get more people vaccinated.

In the aforementioned "bridge phase," restaurants currently allowed to operate at 25% capacity would be allowed to raise to 30% capacity indoors and 50% capacity outside.

Meanwhile, gyms, offices, personal care businesses and stores would expand to 60% capacity from the 50% currently permitted, while museums would be able to expand to 60% capacity from the 25% currently allowed.