(WTTW News)
Visitors to Chicago from anywhere within the United States do not have to quarantine for 10 days or record a negative test for COVID-19 for at least another two weeks, city officials announced Tuesday.
All 50 states along with Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., are recording fewer than 15 new cases per day per 100,000 residents and are no longer covered by the travel order, according to the city’s COVID-19 travel order, which was updated Tuesday.
The city’s travel order has been suspended since June 1, when seven states moved from the orange tier to the less-restrictive yellow tier.
Four states — Washington, Colorado, Wyoming and West Virginia — recorded 10 cases per day per 100,000 residents two weeks ago, but now only Colorado remains above that level, with the U.S. Virgin Islands recording 12.8 cases per day.
Chicago’s daily COVID-19 case rate dropped from 14.9 cases per day per 100,000 residents to 2.8 cases per day per 100,000 residents between May 7 and June 15, according to city data.
Indiana is the hot spot for COVID-19 in the Midwest, with 4.8 cases per day per 100,000 residents, Chicago officials said.
An average of 66 Chicagoans have been diagnosed each day with the coronavirus during the past week, a 28% decrease from the previous week, according to Chicago Department of Public Health data.
The city’s test positivity rate has dropped to 1.2% from 1.6% during the past seven days, even as the number of tests performed dropped to an average of approximately 6,100 per day, according to city data.
That data represents an all-time low for test positivity and cases in Chicago since the start of pandemic, officials said.
The COVID-19 pandemic will be “controlled” when there are fewer than 20 cases per day of COVID-19 on average, officials said.
Daily hospitalizations have fallen by 47% in the past seven days, and 53.7% of all Chicagoans have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to city data.
No one has been cited for violating the travel order, which was first announced nearly a year ago on July 6.
Violators of the quarantine order could have faced fines of $100 to $500 per day for a maximum fine of $7,000, according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office. However, city officials said they used the order as part of a COVID-19 education campaign rather than an enforcement effort.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
