The state of Illinois is expanding vaccine eligibility beginning Monday, meaning school-based staff and other front-line employees will be able to start getting inoculated
COVID-19 Vaccine


The COVID-19 vaccines rolling out in the United States, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world so far require two shots given a few weeks apart.

“My word for you is patience,” Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said Thursday. “I know a lot of you will be frustrated.”

The new sites will provide vaccinations to health care workers this week and will begin vaccinating residents ages 65 and older as well as front-line essential workers starting Monday.

The city of Chicago’s tentative vaccine distribution plan estimates that there will not be enough COVID-19 vaccine available for all Chicagoans ages 16 and older until May 31, the city’s top doctor announced Monday.

Illinois will soon begin the next phase of its COVID-19 vaccination effort, extending doses to residents ages 65 and older as well as essential front-line workers. The rollout is again prompting officials to urge residents get the vaccine once it becomes available to them.

The effort to inoculate all 850,000 health care workers and long-term care facility residents in Illinois from COVID-19 will be “substantially complete” next week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Friday.

New mass vaccination sites will open on Friday at Olive Harvey City College, on Tuesday at Kennedy-King City College and on Wednesday at Truman City College, officials announced.

City health officials will allow Chicagoans 65 and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19 starting next week — if there are doses available after health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities are vaccinated, the city’s top doctor told aldermen Wednesday.

The Trump administration on Tuesday instructed states to begin vaccinating Americans over age 65 for COVID-19, as well as those with chronic medical conditions. We discuss Chicago’s rollout with an infectious disease specialist.

The short answer: Yes. Regardless of previous infection, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people should plan on getting vaccinated when it’s their turn.

“Most people survive this illness but some don’t,” Illinois’ top doctor said before receiving her first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. “I don’t want to gamble with my life and I don’t want anyone else to gamble with theirs.”

With fewer than 350,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine administered to date in Illinois, Gov. J. B. Pritzker urged patience among residents, stating: “We all want this to happen faster.”

The U.S. is entering the second month of the biggest vaccination effort in history with a major expansion of the campaign, opening football stadiums, major league ballparks, fairgrounds and convention centers to inoculate a larger and more diverse pool of people.

What state governments are doing — and what some think they should be doing — to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates in the Black community.

President-elect Biden’s plan is not about cutting two-dose vaccines in half, a strategy that top government scientists recommend against. Instead, it would accelerate shipment of first doses and use the levers of government power to provide required second doses in a timely manner.