“I would say, from my own perspective, if you’re going into a heavily crowded area, you don’t know if somebody is not vaccinated, and so you should just bring your mask with you and keep safe,” he said of individuals regardless of vaccine status.
Pritzker mentioned Israel’s vaccine response, noting the country had high vaccination rates but had recently reinstated indoor mask mandates and other mitigations as the Delta variant spreads.
“The lessons here at home and across the world are a harbinger of what could happen here, particularly in low vaccinated areas,” he said.
According to IDPH, approximately 53.1 percent of Illinoisans over age 12 were fully vaccinated as of Monday, while that number was 55.7 percent for those 18 and older and 73.7 percent for those 65 and older. For those receiving at least one dose, the numbers were 68.8 percent, 71.3 percent and 89.8 percent, respectively.
Still, Pritzker said, that left more than 5 million Illinoisans not fully vaccinated and therefore “unprotected.”
Several Illinois counties have vaccination rates under 25 percent. Those include Fayette County at roughly 23 percent in southern Illinois, Henderson County at roughly 21 percent in west-central Illinois, Hamilton County at roughly 24 percent in southern Illinois and five of Illinois’ southernmost counties, Hardin (24.5 percent), Pope (23 percent), Pulaski (22 percent) and Alexander (14 percent).
