175K Lake County Residents Register For COVID-19 Vaccine

LAKE COUNTY, IL — So far, 25 percent of Lake County residents have signed up to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, health officials said Thursday.

The response has been good, but health officials are urging all who plan to receive a vaccine and live or work in Lake County to register through its online portal. You can also register over the phone by calling the Lake County Health Department at 847-377-8130.

After you are registered, you will be notified when you are eligible to make an appointment. From there, you will be able to schedule a time to receive your vaccine, according to a news release from the local health department.

"Registering in AllVax is more important now than ever before," said Jefferson McMillan-Wilhoit, the health department's director of health informatics and technology. "This portal is designed to shield the public from road bumps on the road to vaccination, but in order to be effective we need everyone to register.”

As of Thursday, 175,000 people in Lake County have registered to receive the vaccine, including 11,264 healthcare workers, 1,911 firefighters or emergency medical services providers and 15,911 other essential workers.

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Currently, the Lake County Health Department is in Phase 1a of vaccinations, which includes providing shots to frontline medical personnel and long-term care facility workers and residents.

As of Wednesday, about a third of health care workers across the state have been vaccinated, and a federally backed program to administer vaccinations at nursing homes began Dec. 28, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. The next phase, Phase 1b, will begin once the state has "substantially completed" the first one, which Pritzker said would take several weeks at least.

That phase will include residents 65 years old and older — there are 1.9 million in that age bracket in Illinois — and more front-line essential workers. As defined by the federal government, that includes police public safety workers, teachers and school staff, manufacturing, agriculture and grocery store workers, public transmit, postal and correctional officers. It also includes incarcerated people, according to the governor's office.

The essential workers in Phase 1b make up 1.3 million Illinoisans.

"As we continue to move through these phases of vaccination, being registered in AllVax is critical,” said Mark Pfister, executive director at the Lake County Health Department. “We want to let you know when it is time to get vaccinated, but we can only do so if you are registered. If you have already registered, remind your loved ones, family, and friends in Lake County to do so as well.”

As of Wednesday morning, 189,600 of the 542,000 total vaccines distributed to the state had been administered, including to some who have received their second of two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna shots.

To date, more than 1 million infections have been reported across the state and more than 17,000 Illinoisans have now died.

As of Wednesday night, 3,921 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 across Illinois, including 783 in intensive care and 450 on ventilators. The statewide case positivity rate — a rolling, seven-day average — is now 8.5 percent. The test positivity rate is 9.8 percent. Both have risen steadily in the past week.

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