Prairie State Wire

With 1,182 new COVID-19 cases on Monday including 5 deaths reported by the Department of Health, Amy Jacobson of Morning Answer asked about the governor’s plan and metrics in raising the flag.

“It’s almost been a year since the flag has been at half staff and, you know, when we were kids we didn’t have cell phones the Internet [to know] when somebody significant passed away when the flag was lowered,” Jacobson asked.

“When are you going to be raising it because now you know we have five COVID deaths yesterday so that was good news. Our last positivity rate is below 3%. What’s the metrics that you’re using in order to raise the flag?”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker explained that there are several things he considers about the situation including the COVID-19 variants and the vaccine.

“I want to make sure, whether it’s a flag, or in some other ways, that we do remind people that this pandemic is not over yet,” he said. “We’re going to be in this for months. For months. And we don’t know how long the vaccines last.”

“We need to continue to worry about the variants that are here now, although the most dangerous ones seem to be covered by the vaccinations that we have available, but there may be other variants that develop as you’ve seen,” Pritzker added, the Capitol Fax reported.  

“And so, we take all that into consideration. I, like you, revere particularly our members of our military have passed away and want to make sure that we honor them appropriately. So we take that all into consideration and we honor them in so many different ways the flag is on the wall.”