Illinois Issues a Vaccine Mandate for Teachers and Health Workers
Illinois health care workers and educators from kindergarten through college will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday in announcing new safety protocols that also include a fresh statewide mandate for masks to be worn indoors.
The mandates, which overlap in several places with existing rules, are a response to a spike in COVID-19 infections fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, particularly in southern and central Illinois.
“Our current vaccination levels are not enough to blunt the ferocity of the delta variant hospitalization surges,” Pritzker, a first-term Democrat, said at a Chicago news conference. “In some regions, hospital administrators are asking for more help to manage the sheer number of incoming patients who, I’ll emphasize again, are almost exclusively individuals who have chosen not to have gotten the life-saving vaccine.”
