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Chicago officials added Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa to the city’s COVID-19 travel advisory on Tuesday as the number of cases continues to spike with the spread of the delta variant of the virus.

In all, the advisory covers 31 states as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., announced Dr. Allison Arwady, the head of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Unvaccinated visitors to Chicago from those states are urged to quarantine for 10 days or record a negative test for the coronavirus within 72 hours of their arrival, officials said.

The city’s travel order, first implemented in July 2020, did not include any states as of June 1 as vaccination efforts tamped down cases and spurred reopenings across the United States. On June 29, officials announced the order would become an advisory, as COVID-19 cases remained low across the nation.

However, progress in stopping the spread of COVID-19 has been reversed with the spread of the more transmissible delta variant of the virus, officials said. 

An average of 347 Chicagoans have been diagnosed each day with the coronavirus during the past week, a 46% increase from the previous week, according to Chicago Department of Public Health data.

The city’s test positivity rate is 3.8%, up from 3.3% from past week, while the number of tests rose 29% to an average of approximately 10,600 per day, according to city data.  

Daily hospitalizations have fallen by 18% in the past seven days, and 56.9% of all Chicagoans have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to city data.

No one was cited for violating the travel order, which could have triggered fines of $100 to $500 per day for a maximum fine of $7,000, according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office. 

City officials said the advisory is designed to be part of a COVID-19 education campaign.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]