* ABC 7…

On Friday, a former big box store in Forest Park will be up and running as Cook County’s second largest mass vaccination site coordinated with effort with the Army National Guard.

“This location which will be able to administer up to 1,000 doses per day, at launch, and then over 2,000 soon after,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said it will be able to increase that to 5,000, depending on supply. The goal of the site is to vaccinate those most in need.

“If we are going to put an end to this pandemic and resume our regular lives, we need to prioritize the vaccine for those who are most at risk and marginalized from access to medical care,” said Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch, Illinois House Speaker.

* Capitol News Illinois…

With 64 percent of the state’s seniors having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Illinois is nearing the “bridge” phase of reopening that will allow for greater capacity limits at businesses and social gatherings.

That number must hit 70 percent to enter the bridge phase, which would trigger another 28-day monitoring period. If virus transmission and hospitalization metrics don’t worsen during the monitoring period, Phase 5 can begin, removing all capacity restrictions.

The vaccination rate for seniors age 65 and older is up from 58 percent on Thursday, when Gov. JB Pritzker first announced the bridge phase. […]

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health website, 13.8 percent of the state’s population has been fully vaccinated. Pritzker said “about one in three” Illinoisans age 16 and older had received at least one vaccine dose, a number that must reach 50 percent for the state to enter Phase 5 of reopening, which is essentially back to normal in terms of capacity restrictions.

* Paducah Sun…

Walk-ins are welcome this week at COVID-19 vaccine clinics organized by the Southern Seven Health Department in southern Illinois.

On Monday, Southern Seven held two vaccine clinics: one at Massac County Head Start in Metropolis and the other at Main Street Center in Anna. […]

“We have been appointment-only for COVID-19 vaccine clinics so far up to this point, and we’re getting to a point where we got a lot of vaccine supply coming into us,” [Nathan Ryder, contact tracing outreach coordinator for Southern Seven] said. “So we’ve seen those supplies increase on a weekly basis, and we’re beginning to get through all those waitlists that we had backed up for our seven counties. So now that we’ve exhausted our waitlist and now that we’re taking appointments, we also have some extra vaccine available for folks who just want to walk in on a daily basis.”

* SJ-R…

Sangamon County surpassed the 100,000 mark Monday for residents who have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, a county spokesman said.

That number meant 64.8% of residents 16 and older had received at least an initial dose and almost 52% of the county’s entire population had received a shot, spokesman Jeff Wilhite said.

He said both vaccination sites operated by the county have begun serving additional groups of people newly eligible for COVID-19 vaccine in Illinois. The eligibility expansion, which took effect Monday, affected higher education staff members, government workers and the news media.