MAHOMET, Ill. (WAND) - An "unofficial prom" event held at a private home in Mahomet in recent weeks is now linked to COVID-19 cases at seven different local businesses.
The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District tells WAND News that 17 cases are linked to the event. Those individuals were either at the event or came in contact with someone who was.
One of the affected businesses has been identified as the Jimmy John’s restaurant in Mahomet.
"We told them all... anybody who attended the prom to go get tested... and, yeah, one of the employees came back positive," said Jimmy John's owner Patrick Wampler. "She'll be off for at least 2 weeks and then obviously have to get tested multiple times before she comes back."
Wampler told WAND the restaurant was closed down for one day last week for a deep cleaning, before reopening. No other employees have since tested positive for the virus.
Other than Jimmy John's, none of the other businesses have been named, but some of them are employers of the teens who attended the prom, or their parents. The health department said not all of the businesses impacted are in Mahomet.
The department says it's been told masks were not worn at the prom.
"Just because we are at what's called Phase Four, that does not mean that anything at all has changed about this virus," said CUPHD Administrator Julie Pryde. "It is still as infectious. It is still causing illness, ranging from mild illness all the way up to hospitalizations and death... Any time you are in a building and you don't have a mask on, and no one else has a mask on, and you're not socially distancing, that is a recipe for outbreak."
The prom event was not sponsored by or sanctioned by the Mahomet-Seymour school district.
