Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she will not attend the special meeting of the Chicago City Council set for Wednesday designed to pressure her to revise her requirement that all city employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Lightfoot dismissed the push as a “stunt” at an unrelated news conference Tuesday afternoon and said she would not change her plan to travel to Miami, announced Monday by her political campaign.

“I will not participate in it,” Lightfoot said.

In the mayor’s absence, Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward) presides over the City Council as president pro tem.

Wednesday’s meeting will be the second time in six months that alderpeople have called an emergency meeting of the City Council to publicly push back against Lightfoot’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward), the mayor’s most frequent critic, said Lightfoot and the leadership of the Chicago Department of Public Health must do a better job of adapting to the changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic during an interview for “Chicago Tonight.”

Lightfoot and her advisers “cherry pick” the scientific data to support their efforts to exercise “control” over the city’s workforce, Lopez said.

Lopez led the effort to call a special meeting to consider a nonbinding resolution calling on city health officials to make COVID-19 policy that includes “natural immunity.”

“We want that option available for those employees,” Lopez said.

In a letter to Lopez, Lightfoot said that while those who have recovered from COVID-19 have some immunity against a future infection, it “varies wildly,” is not predictable and does not last as long as the protection provided by vaccination.

There is no test that can determine someone’s level of protection from COVID-19, including antibody tests.

Lightfoot accused Lopez of disrupting the normal function of the Chicago City Council and said he was attempting to hold city government “hostage.”

Ald. Jason Ervin (28th Ward) told “Chicago Tonight” Chicagoans should not be put at risk by unvaccinated officers.

However, Ervin said the issue was not actually about vaccines and COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

“This is about who is going to run the Chicago Police Department,” Ervin said. “Are the officers going to run the department or is management going to run the department? This is more about a power play.”

Ervin said Wednesday’s special City Council meeting would amount to nothing more than “hijinks” and “political grandstanding.”

Data released Monday by Lightfoot’s office shows 2,367 members of the Chicago Police Department are not vaccinated. Another 199 members of the department never reported whether they had been vaccinated against COVID-19.

That is equivalent to 20.7% of the department, according to city data.

The deadline for all members of the police department to get at least the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was Sunday. The deadline for the final dose is April 14.

Lightfoot said again Wednesday she will enforce the vaccine mandate, and expected the majority of officers get vaccinated before facing termination.

Thirty members of the Chicago Police Department and 19 members of the Chicago Fire Department are not being paid because of their refusal to get vaccinated as of Monday, according to the mayor’s office.

Contact Heather Cherone:@HeatherCherone| (773) 569-1863 |[email protected]