In his daily press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced 73 new COVID-19 deaths since Monday’s briefing.
This marks the state’s highest fatality increase over a 24-hour period to date.
Pritzker also announced that a member of the Illinois Governor’s Office has tested positive for COVID-19.
The Governor’s Office has since done a deep clean of its office space and has instructed many of its employees to work from home, he said. In the 12 days that have passed since the staffer tested positive, no other staff members have shown symptoms of the virus.
“Let this just affirm what we already know: nobody is immune,” Pritzker said.
Tuesday’s announcement brings the statewide death toll to 380, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH).
The IDPH reported 1,287 new cases Tuesday, bringing the state’s total confirmed cases to 13,549 cases.
The state continues its efforts to ramp up testing capability, Pritzker said. Currently, approximately 19 percent of COVID-19 tests are returning positive results, he added.
During Monday’s press briefing, Pritzker announced 1,006 new cases of the coronavirus and 33 additional deaths – the majority of them in Cook County.
Also on Monday, the IDPH began reporting the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus by zip code, rather than focusing solely on county and statewide totals.
This newly public approach to tracking the virus shows the areas that have been hit hardest thus far, such as the 60645 zip code on Chicago’s north side, which had a total of 225 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon.
Source: The Daily Chronicle
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