Chicago cancels St Patrick’s Day parade just a day after Boston halted their festivities amid coronavirus concerns while New York City’s is still a go
- Mayor Lori Lightfoot canceled Chicago’s St Patrick’s Day parade on Wednesday
- She said city’s major weekend festivities will not occur this upcoming weekend
- It was scheduled for March 14 and was canceled after Boston canceled theirs
- New York City hasn’t canceled St Patrick’s Day parade scheduled for March 17
Chicago’s mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced the cancellation of the city’s St Patrick’s Day parade amid coronavirus concerns.
According to the parade’s website, the river dyeing has also been canceled for Saturday. No other details were released.
Chicago doesn’t have any confirmed corornavirus cases, but the state of Illinois has 19.
The mayor’s announcement comes just a day after Boston canceled their St Patrick’s Day parade.
Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has announced the cancellation of the city’s St Patrick’s Day parade (crowds pictured in 2019) amid coronavirus concerns
The Boston parade (crowds in 2018), originally scheduled for March 15, was expected to attract about one million attendees, but Mayor Marty Walsh canceled the parade on Tuesday
The Boston parade, originally scheduled for March 15, was expected to attract about one million attendees.
The decision to cancel the parade was made ‘out of an abundance of caution to ensure that we are doing what is needed to keep the residents of Boston safe and healthy,’ mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement shared via Twitter.
‘While the risk in Boston remains low, this situation is changing very quickly,’ the statement said. ‘Our top priority is preventing any new cases, to the best of our ability.’
The most important St Patrick’s Day parade in the US, which takes place in New York City, has yet to be canceled by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The New York parade typically attracts two million spectators. The parade is scheduled for March 17 and will go on, for now.
‘We do not have a plan to cancel the parade at this point,’ de Blasio said during a press briefing.
De Blasio did say that he is considering canceling the parade: ‘We’re talking it through with the parade committee. We have to really think about this one because it’s a beloved event, an important event.’
There have been at least 20 confirmed coronavirus cases in New York. The city has yet to enact any official isolation measures, though Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency.
New York City’s St Patrick’s Day parade has yet to be canceled by Mayor Bill de Blasio (pictured with light green tie, right during 2019 parade)
New York’s parade (pictured March 2019) is one of the most important such celebrations in the US and is currently scheduled to go on for March 17 despite coronavirus fears
‘Now we’re going to watch that day to day, hour to hour,’ de Blasio said.
‘At a certain point we may say the numbers are telling us something different,’ he said, adding that it was necessary to find a ‘balance’ between preserving health and safety and ‘the fact that people’s livelihoods matter’.
March celebrations honoring Saint Patrick, the patron of Ireland, bring together more people in the US – where millions of people are descended from Irish immigrants – than in Ireland itself, where the government on Monday also canceled festivities.
The New York parade, which goes up Fifth Avenue from 44th Street to 80th, has taken place every year since 1762.
The event takes on a crowded party atmosphere, and attendees are known to consume large amounts of beer and other alcoholic beverages – which could make following precautionary social distancing measures intended to stem the spread of the virus more difficult.
Social, political and business events have been canceled around the world in an effort to slow the deadly coronavirus’s transmission.
There have been more than 121,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the world and more than 4,300 deaths.
In the US, there are more than 1,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 31 deaths.