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CHICAGO (LifeSiteNews) — Starting January 3, everyone aged 5 and older will need to have their vaccine passport to enter most places of public accommodation in the city of Chicago.

All residents and visitors to the Windy City will need to show proof of vaccination to “dine indoors, visit gyms, or enjoy entertainment venues where food or drink are being served.” All employees of these institutions must be fully jabbed or wear a mask at all times and present a negative COVID-19 test weekly.

“These are the places that are the most risky places for spread, which is why we’re focused on them,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

Neither the mayor’s office nor the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) responded to a LifeSiteNews email Wednesday that asked for studies relied on in making the decision, including any research that indicates diners in restaurants or people working out at gyms were spreading COVID in those locations.

Both Mayor Lightfoot and CDPH Commissioner Allison Arwady blamed people who have chosen not to get jabbed for the outbreak of COVID.

“To put it simply, if you have been living vaccine-free, your time is up. If you wish to live life as w/the ease to do the things you love, you must be vax’d,” Lightfoot wrote in a tweet on December 21. “This health order may pose an inconvenience to the unvaccinated, and in fact it is inconvenient by design.”

Her public health commissioner also singled out the “unvaccinated” for blame, despite the admission by the mayor that the “city continues to see a surge of COVID-19 Delta and now Omicron cases” even though it has concentrated on “diligent and equitable vaccine distribution efforts throughout this year.”

“I remain most worried about the hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans who still have not received a single dose of COVID vaccine nor recovered from COVID infection,” Arwady said. “I’m worried for their own health, but also for the risk they pose to others’ health and to our hospital capacity — and while we are in this concerning surge, we must limit that risk.”

The vaccine passport order exempts nonresident professional athletes, performing artists, and people entering a business for 10 minutes or less to use the bathroom or pick up food or drinks.

It also exempts people with a medical or religious exemption as long as they can prove someone such as an employer has granted them an exception and a “medical professional” has given them a negative COVID test in the past 72 hours.

The city did not release any hard metrics or guidelines for when it will withdraw its vaccine passport requirement.

“This order will remain in effect until the City deems that the threat of COVID-19 to public health has diminished significantly,” Mayor Lightfoot said. Other cities including Boston and New York have implemented vaccine passport requirements.

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