This week, the Centers for Disease Control announced new guidance, which recommends that all individuals, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public settings in areas that are considered to have “substantial” or “high” transmission rates of COVID-19. The Illinois Department of Public Health adopted those recommendations shortly after the announcement.

Substantial and high transmission areas are determined by county and are defined as more than 50 cases per 100,000 people on a seven-day basis. While Illinois has not changed its mask mandate since these new recommendations took place, State Senator Syverson says the threshold to be considered a substantial or high area unfairly impacts smaller counties, many of which would only need to have a few people test positive to trigger the mask recommendation.

The transmission status of each Illinois county can be viewed here.