Northwest Indiana tourism and municipal leaders aren’t especially concerned about Chicago officials threatening to add the Hoosier State to the city’s COVID-19 quarantine list.
Dr. Allison Arwady, Chicago’s public health commissioner, on Tuesday recommended Chicago residents no longer travel to Indiana after the state recorded more than 15 daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents last week.
She also warned, absent a prompt decrease in Indiana’s COVID-19 infection rate, the state next week is likely to join the 21 others whose residents are required to quarantine 14 days in Chicago before going out in public.
If that happens, Hoosiers working in Chicago at jobs broadly defined as “essential” would be exempt from the travel order.
But all other visits by Indiana residents to Chicago, and Chicago residents returning from travel to Indiana, would be subject to mandatory quarantine, with violators subject to a potential fine of $100 to $500 per day, up to $7,000.
But as anyone who has been to Chicago around the Fourth of July can attest, just because the city bans something from Indiana, such as fireworks, doesn’t mean it won’t come in. And enforcement of such bans is practically nonexistent given the city’s more serious crime issues.
“It’s laughable,” said Speros Batistatos, president and CEO of Lake County’s South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority. “Coming from a city that’s been nearly burnt to the ground, whose leadership has decimated the hospitality and restaurant industry, to suggest that you shouldn’t travel to our state? To me, I’m shaking my head.”
Batistatos said Indiana has a mask mandate in place, Region residents and visitors are abiding by COVID-19 prevention guidelines, and area restaurants and hotels are following all the spacing, cleaning and sanitizing precautions needed to keep visitors safe.
“We take safety and COVID very seriously as a destination, and as a state,” Batistatos said. “And to have someone, in a city like Chicago, that literally is in chaos, suggest that there’s a problem on this side of the border is laughable.”
Batistatos said Chicago residents clearly agree, since in the past six months he’s seen more Illinois license plates in Indiana than probably any point in the past.
“Americans are shying away from big cities and big gatherings. They want national parks, they want places they can drive to in their car, and they want wide open spaces and small-town charm. We’ve got that. And the people of Illinois know we have that,” he said. “The people of Chicago are trying to get out of their high rises where they feel imprisoned and get into some open space where they can breathe the air and enjoy some quality of life.”
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., whose city borders Chicago, likewise said he sees thousands of Chicago residents coming to Northwest Indiana every single day, and thousands of Region residents commuting into Chicago for work, recreation or other purposes.
“I went to Chicago just a few days ago to have dinner, and I wore my mask, and (my wife) Marissa and I went there and we had a great time,” McDermott said.
“We’re trying to support businesses that are struggling right now. This is just one more barrier that they’re talking about that may scare Hoosiers from going to Chicago. We support Chicago as well, and they need all the support they can get.”
The Democrat said Hammond shares Chicago’s goal of reducing COVID-19 infections. But he said enacting an unenforceable restriction based on a surge of cases at Indiana college campuses and the far southwestern corner of the state is the wrong way to go about it.
“We’re talking about something that’s theoretical, it’s not really practical,” McDermott said. “When they start putting roadblocks up on the border, I’ll start to get concerned. That’s the only thing that’s really going to stop Hoosiers from going into Chicago and stop Chicago residents from going into Indiana.
Read More: Region leaders scoff at Chicago possibly restricting travel to and from Indiana