Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau does not agree with Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s order closing indoor dining in the area and spoke out about it in a recent message to the community.
Pekau said he wants transparency as to why Pritzker issued the order. He said he found data from the DuPage County Public Health Department that shows that restaurants were responsible for 1.4% of COVID-19 cases in the county.
“The source is the Illinois Department of Public Health Outbreak Reporting System,” Pekau said. “It shows that 1.4% of the cases in DuPage County are from restaurants, and a whopping 77% of cases are from long-term care, skilled nursing and assisted living facilities.”
Pekau said that information isn’t available on the websites for the Department of Public Health or the Cook County Public Health Department.
“I want to know why is it being hidden from us? This is important information that we can use to make decisions,” Pekau said. “I can only conclude that it’s being hidden because it does not support locking down restaurants.”
Pekau questioned why video gaming inside a restaurant was considered safe, but eating was not.
“Is that because of the data and science or because the state skims 30% of tax off of the gaming revenue?” Pekau said. “Scientific data-driven people like me want to know — the people of Orland Park in Illinois want to know. The restaurant owners who are having their livelihoods destroyed deserve transparency.”
Earlier this week, Pritzker announced several regions in the state would be going back to Tier 1 lockdown after seeing spikes in hospital admissions.
According to his Tweet, Region 11 was the most recent area to be kicked back to Tier 1 having seen a positivity rate increase and COVID-19-related hospital admissions in at least seven of the last 10 days.
“Chicago is now averaging more than twice as many COVID-related hospital admissions per day as it was a month ago,” Pritzker tweeted.
Currently, Regions 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10 are in Tier 1. Region 11 will drop down to Tier 1 on Friday. Region 1 is in Tier 2 mitigations right now.
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