Illinois surpasses 3,000 COVID-19 deaths, 70,000 cases

Illinois surpassed 3,000 total deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday, announcing an additional 138 deaths for a total of 3,111, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Illinois has 2,641 more COVID-19 confirmed cases and 15% of more than 17,000 statewide tests came back positive over the past 24 hours.

The state has now seen 70,873 total cases of the virus. Now 379,043 people in Illinois have been tested.

As of late Wednesday night, Illinois had 4,862 COVID-19 patients in the hospital. Of those, 1,253 are in the ICU and 766 are on ventilators. The state has 9,973 open hospital beds.

As of Thursday, Chicago has seen 28,441 confirmed cases of COVID-19, while the rest of Cook County has seen 19,900.

Lake County has seen 4,762 confirmed cases, DuPage 4,213, Will 3,434, Kane 2,498, McHenry 857, Kendall 363, DeKalb 161, Ogle 139, Whiteside 99, La Salle 91, Lee 51, Grundy 50, Bureau 12 and Carroll 10.

As of Wednesday, the latest data available, the state’s Northeast Region (Cook, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, McHenry, Lake and Will counties) had a positivity rate of 21.9% and ran 12,420 tests. The region also had an average of 18% of medical/surgical beds available, 19% of ICU beds available and 62% of ventilators available.

The North Central region (Bureau, DeKalb, La Salle, Lee, Ogle, Whiteside, Carroll, Boone, Winnebago, Stephenson, Putnam and Jo Daviess counties) had a positivity rate of 8.1% and completed 1,601 tests. On average, there was an availability of 42% of medical/surgical beds, 42% of ICU beds and 71% of ventilators.

The Central region had a 7% positivity rate and completed 1,029 tests. On average, there was an availability of 53% of medical/surgical beds, 47% of ICU beds and 67% of ventilators.

The Southern region had an 11.2% positivity rate and 570 total tests. On average, there was an availability of 47% of medical/surgical beds, 29% of ICU beds and 82% of ventilators.

Regions must hit the following thresholds to move on to the next phase in the Restore Illinois plan:

At or under a 20 percent positivity rate and increasing no more than 10 percentage points over a 14-day period, AND

No overall increase (i.e. stability or decrease) in hospital admissions for COVID-19-like illness for 28 days, AND

Available surge capacity of at least 14 percent of ICU beds, medical and surgical beds, and ventilators.

Source: The Daily Chronicle