Coronavirus in Chicago: Omicron surge starting to ease, top doc says

Chicago’s Dr. Allison Arwady shared some promising news Tuesday morning. She said slowly but surely, the omicron surge is starting to ease.

In Chicago, we are averaging about 4,378 COVID-19 cases a day, which is down 24 percent from a week ago.

Positivity rates are also trending in that direction at 17.4 percent — down from 19.2 percent one week ago.

Chicago's health commissioner says hospitalizations remain high with more than 200 Chicago residents hospitalized with COVID each day.

Twenty Chicagoans are dying each day. Most of those patients, she says, are not vaccinated.

More than 78 percent of all eligible Chicagoans are vaccinated.

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Dr. Arwady is reminding the public that while vaccinated individuals are still getting the omicron variant, their risk is lower.

"So first of all the vaccines do very clearly decrease the risk, even of infection. So this again is just infection," Dr. Arwady said during a Facebook livestream. "And what we see here is cases in red among Chicagoans who are unvaccinated, in light blue among fully vaccinated, in dark blue among boosted. And you see that it's about twice as likely to be infected if you are unvaccinated versus if you are vaccinated."

Meanwhile, Mayor Lori Lightfoot also spoke Tuesday for the first time since recovering from her coronavirus infection.

"My symptoms were relatively mild. A bad cold. Luckily I recovered pretty quickly with my doctor," she said.

If you are interested in ordering a free at-home COVID test from the government, you will need to do so online at covidtests.gov.